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ST. NICHOLAS: 



AN 



LLU ST RATED MAGAZINE 



Ma. 



For Young Folks 



CONDUCTED BY 



MARY MAPES DODGE. 



VOLUME XIV. 

Part I., November, 1886, to April, 1887. 



T HE CENTURY CO. NEW YORK. 

T. FISHER UNWIN, LONDON. 



Copyright, 1887, by The Century Co. 



The De Vinne Pkkss. 



Library, Univ. «f 
North C»rr*V^« 



ST. NICHOLAS: 

VOLUME XIV. 

PART I. 

Six Months — November, 1886, to April, 1887. 



CONTENTS OF PART I. VOLUME XIV. 



PAGE. 



Among the Gas-wells. (Illustrated by Harry Fenn and others) Samuel W. Hall 292 

"A poet, named Christopher Crumb." Tingle. (Illustrated by the),,,. „ , , a 

' J & ' \ Oliver Herjord 304 

Author) S 

April Jester, An. Poem Frank Dempster Sherman . . 403 

Archery. Jingle. (Illustrated and engrossed by R. B. Birch) I. D 413 

"A Raging, Roaring Lion." Jingle. (Illustrated by the Author) J. G. Francis 99 

Bamberry Boys and their Flock of Sheep, The. (Illustrated by II. \ 

A. Ogden) \ J - T - Tnnvbridge. .. .113 

Between Sea and Sky. (Illustrated by J. W. Bolles and G. YV. Edwards) Hjalmar Hjortli Boyesen , . . . 243 

Bird that is Fond of Sport, A. ( Illustrated) 456 

Blind Lark, The. (Illustrated by W. H. Drake) Louisa M. Alcott 12 

Boring for Oil. (Illustrated by H. F. Farny, Harry Fenn, and others). . . - Samuel W. Hall 42 

Boyhood of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, The William H. Rideing ... . 323 

Brownies' Friendly Turn, The. Verses. (Illustrated by the Author) . . Palmer Cox 387 

Brownies in the Gymnasium, The. (Illustrated by the Author) Palmer Cox 67 

Brownies in the Toy-shop, The. (Illustrated by the Author) Palmer Cox 229 

Brownies' Singing-school, The. Verses. (Illustrated by the Author) .... Palmer Cox 303 

Bulrush Caterpillar, The. (Illustrated) lulia P. Ballard 394 

C/Esar, A Dog of Spain. (Illustrated by F. H. Lungren) Mrs. J. A. Hoxie 59 

" Chirr-a-whirr, the squirrel says. " Jingle Emilie Poulsson 11 

Children's Crusade, The. Operetta. (Illustrated by G. F. Barnes) E. S. Brooks 460 

Christmas Conspiracy, A. (Illustrated by Jessie McDermott) Rose Lattimore Ailing. . .141, 211 

Christmas Stories. Picture, drawn by George Foster Barnes 185 

City of Old Homesteads, A. (Illustrated by Harry Fenn and others) Alice Wellington Rollins ... 3 

" Clever Peter Penny." Jingle. (Illustrated by G. R. Halm) E. E. Sterns 251 

Commercial Traveler, A George J. Manson 357 

COWSLIPS. Poem Susan Hartley Swett 417 

Cricket Songs. Verses E. Whitney 113 

'Cross Country with the News. (Illustrated by W. de Meza) Frank Marshall White . . . 41S 

Dog Stories, St. Nicholas. (Illustrated) 59, 377 

Dolly's Lullaby. Song Helen Gray Cone 72 

_ Drummer on Snowshoes, The. (Illustrated by the Author) Ernest E. Thompson 414 

_ Edith of Scotland. (Illustrated by A. J. Keller) E. S. Brooks 28 

J Effie's Realistic Novel Alice Wellington Rollins. . . . 25S 

C^ Eton, A Visit to. (Illustrated by Joseph Pennell) Elizabeth Robins Pennell . 200 

2_ Eton School, A Glimpse of. (Illustrated by Joseph Pennell) Edwin D. Mead 194 



VI CONTENTS. 



359 



PAGE 

Fate of a Roller Skater, The. Picture, drawn by E. W. Kemble 398 

Fate of the man who was too easily surprised, The. Picture, drawn > 

by Oliver Herford $ 

" Fifty-two Soldiers." Jingle. (Illustrated by G. R. Halm) E. E. Sterns . 235 

Foolish Flamingo, The. Jingle. (Illustrated and engrossed by R. B. Birch) A. R. Wells 434 

Fortunate Opening, A. (Illustrated by W. A. Rogers) Frank R. Stockton 91, 186 

French Jingle, A. (Illustrated) 364 

Frozen Dragon, A. (Illustrated by D. C. Beard) Charles Frederick Holder . . . 446 

Galley Cat, The. Verses. (Illustrated by R. B. Birch) Margaret I'andegrift 20S 

Gas-wells, Among the. (Illustrated by Harry Fenn and others) Samuel W. Hall 292 

Gas-wells, More About. (Illustrated by A. J. Meeker) G. Frederick Wright 385 

Glimpse of Eton School, A. (Illustrated by Joseph Pennell) Edwin D. Mead 194 

Good Day for Skating, A. Picture, drawn by Albert E. Sterner 254 

Good-night. Poem Sydney Dayre 414 

Grizel Cochrane's Ride. (Illustrated by R. B. Birch) Elia W. Peattie 271 

" Guess a riddle now you must." Jingle. (Illustrated by G. R. Halm). E. E, Sterns 356 

Happy Family, A. Picture, from a photograph by Hegger 376 

Happy New Year, A. Picture, drawn by J. G. Francis 1S9 

Harrow-on-the-Hill. "(Illustrated by Joseph Pennell) Elizabeth Robins Pennell . 404 

Hide and Seek. Verses. (Illustrated by the Author) Albert E. Sterner 41 

Historic Girls E. S. Brooks 2S, 326 

Edith of Scotland. (Illustrated by A. I. Keller) 28 

Jacqueline of Holland. (Illustrated by R. B. Birch 1 326 

History of Jack, The. (Illustrated by J. E. Travis) Oliver Ellsworth Wood 377 

How a Great Battle Panorama is Made. (Illustrations from photo- ) 

graphs and from drawings by the Author) \ Theodore R. Davis 99 

How Doueledarling's Old Shoes Became Lady's Slippers, (lllus- ) 

^ i 1- t\ iiru i \ C Candace Wheeler ^42 

trated by I )ora Wheeler) ^ •" 

Human Melodf.on, The. (Illustrated by Carl Hirschberg) Delia W. Lyman 306 

Idyl of the King, An. Poem. (Illustrated by George Foster Barnes) . . .Ernest Whitney 224 

If I Were a Boy. ( Illustrated) Washington Gladden 267 

" If YOU would have your learning stay'." Jingle Emilie Ponlsson 11 

In a Flamingo Rookery. (Illustrated by James C. Beard) Charles Frederick Holder . . . 54 

In Christmas Season, Long Ago. Poem. (Illustrated by R. B. Birch). . . Helen Gray Cone 83 

International. Verses. (Illustrated by Rose Mueller Sprague) M. M. D 90 

" I think, said the wren. " Jingle Emilie Ponlsson 11 

" I went TO Bran Garden." Jingle. (Illustrated by G. R. Halm) E. E. Sterns 251 

Jacqueline of Holland. (Illustrated by R. B. Birch) E. S. Brooks 326 

Jenny's Boarding-house. (Illustrated by W. A. Rogers) Tames Otis 279, 34S, 44S 

Jingles ..: 11,53,99, 194, 223,235, 251,291,307,333,356, 364,373,384,413, 434 

Juan and Juanita. (Illustrated by Henry Sandham and others) Frances Courtenay Baylor. . 33 

138, 216, 284, 334, 42S 

K andikew. Verses Eudora S. Bumstead 54 

King and the Students, The Albert Morris Bagby 427 

Knavish Kite, The. Jingle. (Illustrated by R. B. Birch) Isabel Frances Bellows 11 

Lesson in Natural History', A. Verses. (Illustrated by Jessie McDermott)..)/*;jw;W Johnson 395 

Lesson in Patriotism, A. (Illustrated by A. C. Redwood) Yoah Bi-ooks 340 

Little Captive, A. Poem. (Illustrated) Mary L. B. Branch 66 

" Little Jack Jick." Jingle. (Illustrated by G. R. Halm) E. E. Sterns 251 

Little Mittens. (Illustrated by A. E. Sterner) Tobe Hodge 470 

" Love you best the budding SrRiNG ? " Jingle Emilie Ponlsson 11 

Maggie Grey's Bird. (Illustrated by the Author) Frank Bellew 382 

Magic Buttons, The. (Illustrated by F. Childe Hassam) Meta G. Adams 149 

Man who Drove Downstairs, The. (Illustrated by H. A. Ogden) Gerriih Eldridge 26 

Merrie Christmas Feast, Ye. Poem. (Illustrated and engrossed by R. \ 

_ „. , t Edith M. Thomas 165 

B. Birch S ° 

Millennium, A. Verses E. W. 185 



CONTENTS. Vll 



PACE. 

Millet and the Children. (Illustrated) Ripley Hitchcock 166 

Ministering Children's League, The. (Illustrated) 290 

Molly's Poetry. ( Illustrated) Walter Learned 58 

More about Gas-\veli.s. (Illustrated by E. J. Meeker) G. Frederick Wright 385 

Mrs. Feathertail and Squire Fuzz. (Illustrated by Culmer Barnes) . . .Mrs. James Herbert Morse . . 29S 

My Flowers. Poem Mary E. Bradley 455 

MYSTIC Macaw, The. Jingle. (Illustrated ami engrossed by R. B. Birch) .. Isabel Frances Bellows .... 194 

Nest in a Pocket, A. Poem. (Illustrated by George Foster Barnes) Mary E. Bradley 146 

" Never, never a day' should pass." Verse Emilie Poulsson 291 

New Leaf from Washington's Boy Life, A. (Illustrated by II. A. Ogden) . William F. Came ... . 373 

" Now, players all, mark what I say." Jingle Emilie Poulsson 53 

Panorama, A Battle; How it is Made. (Illustrated from photographs ) Theodore R Davis 

and from drawings by the Author) ' 

Paul and Nicolai in Alaska. (Illustrated by A. J. Keller) M. L. Tidball 367 

Peas Porridge Hot. Verses James C. Johnson 316 

Philopena, A. Poem. (Illustrated by R. B. Birch) Mary Mapcs Dodge 302 

Pictures .150,185,189,254,331,359,376,398,477 

Pine-needles. Poem William H. Hayne 271 

Pin-wheel Time. Picture, drawn by YV. T. Peters 331 

PlSCATAQUA River. Poem Thomas Bailey Aldrich . . . . 325 

Porcelain Stove, The. (Illustrated by G. YV. Edwards) Avery McAlpine 262 

Queerness of Quelf, The. Verse-. N. P. Babcock 456 

Ready for Business George J. Manson 357 

A Commercial Traveler 357 

Reason for Smiling, A. Poem Emilie Poulsson 227 

Report Concerning the " King's Move Puzzle." 478 

Richard Carr's Baby. (Illustrated by W. A. Rogers) Richard H. Davis 50 

" Said Jeremy Jack to Timothy Tom." Jingle Emilie Poulsson 307 

Saru-KANI Kassen. (Illustrated) From the Japanese 308 

Scheming Old Santa Claus, A. (Illustrated by Irving R. Wiles) John R. Coryell 126 

Sir Pen's Little Army. Verses. (Illustrated and engrossed by the Author). Alfred Brennan 151 

Sixteen and Six. Verses. (Illustrated by the Author) Albert E. Sterner 20 

Song in the Night, The. Poem James Buckham 347 

Song of Singers, A. Poem Ida Whipple Benham 19 

Song of Spring, A. Poem. ( Illustrated) Celia Thaxter 445 

St. Nicholas Dog Stories. (Illustrated) 59, 377 

Ca;sar, a Dog of Spain Mrs. A. J. Hoxie 59 

Two Venetian Dogs Katharine Branson 63 

The History of Jack Oliver Ellsworth Wood 377 

Story of a Squash, The. Verses. (Illustrated and engrossed by R. B. > 

B;,.,;^ C Mrs. E. T. Corbett 120 

Story of Grumble Tone, The. Verses Ella Wheeler Wilcox 3S1 

Story of Prince Fairyfoot, The. (Illustrated by Alfred Brennan). ... Frances Hodgson Burnett . . S4 

190, 254 

Talking in their Sleep. Poem Edith M. Thomas 40 

Tea-kettle Song, The. (Illustrated and engrossed by G. R. Halm) E. M. B 458 

Ten Times One is Ten. (Illustrated) Alice Wellington Rollins.. 226 

"The cold moon is dead." Jingle. (Illustrated by Rose Mueller Sprague). . William II. Abbott 373 

"There once was an Ichthyosaurus." (Illustrated by R. B. Birch) Isabel Frances Bellows 333 

Those Christmas Stockings. (Illustrated by W. L. Taylor) Rose Hawthorne Lathrop 179 

Tommy Interviews a Peacock Feather. (Illustrated by G. F. Barnes) ..Alice Wellington Rollins 365 

Tommy, The Clown. Picture 4yy 

Tongs, The. Poem. (Illustrated by R. B. Birch) C. Lydia Gould 360 

Turtle's Story, The. (Illustrated) R. A". Munkitfiick 332 

Two Venetian Dogs. (Illustrated by II. P. Share) Katharine Branson. 63 

Victor Hugo's Tales to his Grandchildren. (Illustrated by R. B. Birch) Brander Matthews 21 

Visit to Eton, A. (Illustrated by Joseph Pennell) Elizabeth Robins Pennell . 200 



Vlll CONTEXTS. 



Warning, A. Verses. ( Illustrated by R. B. Birch) Anna M. Piatt 252 

War Stories for Boys and Girls. ( Illustrated) Gen. Adam Bad/an 435 

The Merrimac and the Monitor 4^c 

"We are tenors who sing in the chorus." (Illustrated by Oliver; 

Herford) \ ,! - "'■ Goodrich 223 

What a Boy Saw in Madeira. (Illustrated by H. I'. Share) D. //. Triton 362 

What the Jonquil Said. Verses M.F.Butts 413 

When Grandpa Was a Little Boy. \ Illustrated by R. B. Birch) Malcolm Douglas 228 

Who can read this ? French jingle. (Illustrated 1 364 

Winter. Poem John Vance Cheney 339 

Wizard Frost. Poem ' Frank Dempster Sherman. . . 253 

Woodcock and the Sparrow, The. Verses. (Illustrated and engrossed \ 

by Alfred Brennan) $ 

Word to our Readers, A 236 

Working Monkeys. (Illustrated by Jas. C. Beard) Olive Thome Miller 423 



DEPARTMENTS. 

For Very Little Folk. (Illustrated.) 

A Letter from a Doll 390 

A Queer Horse-car 390 



Plays and Music. 

Dolly's Lullaby \ WorcIs b >' Helcn Gra - V Conc 

\ Music bv Karl Klauser . . . 



72 



Peas Porridge Hot James C. Johnson 316 

The Children's Crusade \ Words b ? E ' S ' Brooks ■ 



Music by Frederic Preston 



460 



Jack-in-the-Pulpit. ( Illustrated. ) 

Introduction — Do Birds Never Fly Down ? — A Simple Question — A New Moral to an Old Fable — A 
Cocoa-nut Prison — A Fine Story Spoiled (illustrated) — Who Would? 70; Introduction — A New lack 
(illustrated) — The Pine-tree's Secret — The Weather-cock's Complaint — Queer Names for Things, 152; 
Introduction — A Place where Fire Almost Gets Cold — Fingers and Thumbs — A Snail Race (illustrated) 

— Caught by a Lobster, 232; Introduction — A Queer Table — Does Anybody Else Own One? — Do 
Birds Fly Down? — Another Queer Barometer — A Fire in a Scotch River — A Pane Picture — Fishing in 
the Dictionary, 314 ; Introduction — Don't All Answer at Once — Very Gentle Bees — Old Sayings in Rhyme 

— About that Lobster — Ned's View of Things — More Queer Names for Things — The Insect World — 
Wind (illustrated), 392; Introduction — An April Fool — A Remarkable Message — Insect Weather Prophets 

— A Milk-fed Pumpkin — A Family Feud — A Wonderful Monogram (illustrated), 472. 

Agassiz Association. (Illustrated) 74, 156, 236 

The Letter-box. (Illustrated) 77, 154, 234, 317, 396, 474 

The Riddle-box. (Illustrated) 79, 159, 239, 319, 399, 479 

Editorial Notes " 154,234,318,474 

Frontispieces. 

"The Last Walk on the Beach," by Mary Hallock Foote, facing Title-page of Volume — "In Christmas 
Season, Long Ago," by R. B. Birch, facing page 83 — " Ye Merrie Christmas Feast," by R. B. Birch, facing 
page 163 — " Between Sea and Sky," by J. W. Bolles, facing page 243 — " Ajnx Slowly Rose and Looked Up 
into the Girl's Calm Face," by R. B. Birch, facing page 323 — "The Monkeys were sent into the Trees to 
Gather Fruit," by James C. Beard. 





mi?± 



THE LAST WALK ON THE BEACH. 

DRAWN BY MARY HALLOCK FOOTE. 



ENGRAVED BY T. COLE. 



ST. NICHOLAS. 



Vol. XIV. 



NOVEMBER, 1886. 

[Copyright, 1886, by The CENTURY CO.] 

A CITY OF OLD HOMESTEADS. 
By Alice Wellington Rollins. 



No. 1. 



HOW MANY of you know what an old home- 
stead is ? Those of you who do will perhaps be 
quite indignant with me for asking such a ques- 
tion ; but in these days, when almost everybody is 
trying, as hard as he can, not only to live in a 
handsomer house than that in which his grand- 
father lived, but in a handsomer house than 
that in which he himself lived a year ago, it is 
not easy for children to have many associations 
with their temporary homes. Even those of you 
who know what an old homestead is, probably 
think of it as some nice big old house away off in 
the country, without any neighbors, where people 
go for a month or two in summer for the sake of 
the old associations. 

But I know where there is a whole city of home- 
steads. It is, indeed, a veritable city, with paved 
streets, gas-lamps, a custom-house, and a mayor. 
But almost all of its citizens dwell in old home- 
steads, the homes of their fathers, grandfathers, 
and great-grandfathers. There are few really 
modern houses in the place, for, although there are 
plenty of Oueen Anne window-panes, they date back 
to the era of genuine small windows, and every 
one who stays in Portsmouth, or who comes to 
Portsmouth, is far too anxious to dwell in a home- 
stead to think of building a house "cut bias," as 
are the latest caprices of architecture at Newport 
or in New Jersey. Our very town itself has the 
generous air of being an old homestead, with its 
splendid old elms, its ministers who never think 
of staying less than twenty-five years in its pulpits, 



its door-plates on private houses and signs over 
the stores with names of people who have long 
been dead. But you must not think we are tak- 
ing a Rip Van Winkle nap. Oh, no ! we know 
what the modern fashions are, only we prefer the 
old ones. You must not think of Portsmouth as a 
queer little old town set away to cool in the heart of 
lonely and sequestered mountains. No, indeed ! 
Within eight or nine miles of it, in four directions, 
are four of the most popular summer resorts of the 
day. You know them all by name : the Isles of 
Shoals, Rye Beach, Newcastle, and York. Fash- 
ion flits through our streets in phaetons ; money 
knocks at our door and tries to buy our old china ; 
beauty gazes at our old portraits and gets a hint 
for her next new gown ; taste builds beautiful 
villas as near to us as it possibly can. Bless you ! 
We are not half so deaf as the man who blows the 
horn on the tally-ho that rattles up from the 
beaches seems to think. If we are old, it is be- 
cause we prefer to be old, thank you ! And we 
know the world. Its city people come to us to get 
cool, and its Lieutenant Greely comes to us from 
the Arctic circle to get warm ; its giddy girls waltz in 
our parlors ; its yachts skim through our harbor, its 
navy anchors off our shores ; its poets find no haunts 
so favorable to the sweetest inspiration. For here 
Edmund C. Stedman found the rocks on which to 
build (he summer castle, whither and whence his 
most charming fancies come and go ; while Celia 
Thaxter knows no surf or ocean breeze or white- 
sailed outlook that can compare with ours. We 



A CITY OF OLD HOMESTEADS. 



[November, 



quite understand our own value, and make no bricks of which they are built were brought from 

effort to assimilate the gay life that is welcome to England. Some are so very old that they are now 

rush past us and leave us behind. We know too scarcely habitable. But most of them are simply 

well that fashion and beauty and money and taste grand, square old houses, with great big airy rooms, 

are really envying us. We know what it means fronting close upon the street perhaps, with rather 




«*', 












WW 



** 



STEDMAN. AT NEW CAST 
NEAR PORTSMOUTH. 




when we hear that the shingles 

for the new villas are being dipped 

in creosote ; they are trying to 

make them look as old as ours. 

You would find it very difficult 

to purchase any of our old 

china. We have a nay, when 

we drive or sail over to call on 

city friends at Rye Beach or the 

Shoals and they ask us if wc have 

not come to stay, of drawing our 

India shawls closer about our 

shoulders — the real India shawls 

that our own great-grandfathers 

brought home themselves from India to our own 

great-grandmothers — and saying carelessly : 

"Oh, no! we are at the homestead, you know. 
for the summer." 

Somehow it seems very inelegant to be reduced 
to the necessity of paying four or five dollars a 
day for board at a hotel, when you compare it 
with having a homestead that not only opens its 
doors to you, but, as Mr. Emerson says, nails them 
back, entreating you to come with all of your 
eleven children and stay for at least three months. 

Of these Portsmouth homesteads, some are his- 
torical and famous. Some are so old that the 




RBOR SIDE. 



a pride in keeping their fine old gardens a secret 
from the passer-by. Mystery and old-fashioned 
charm begin at the very threshold. The door is a 
single door, but it is wider than both the doors of 
New York houses put together, and it is adorned 
with a great big beautiful brass knocker. There 
is a door-bell, too; for, to tell the truth, modern 
conveniences are convenient, and we are not so 
obstinate but that we accept new things which do 
not thrust out the old. Nothing must be displaced ; 
but anything that can find room for itself beside 
the old is welcome to take root with us. If you 
will let the knocker stav, vou may add a door-bell ; if 



iS86. ] 



A CITY OF OLD HOMESTEADS. 



you will keep the old lamps, that used to burn 
sperm oil, on the mantel, you may have a gas- 
chandelier pendent from the ceiling; if there is 
room for a gladiolus beside the peonies, you are 
welcome to plant one ; there is no harm in hang- 
ing a hammock under the old apple-trees ; and we 
will even throw out a bay-window from the library 
if it can be done without disturbing too many of 
the ladies'-delights that have always blossomed 
there. Oh, no ! we are not obstinate ; we are only 
conservative. 

Once inside the door, you will find yourself in a 
great hall, perhaps lined with family portraits of 
dowagers in satin and brocade or of elderly gentle- 
men in knee-breeches, buckles, and ruffled shirts, 



one old colonial house, not many years ago, when 
they began scraping off the wall-paper before put- 
ting a new one on, they found the walls under the 
old paper, the whole length of the staircase, painted 
in colored landscape — a most remarkable land- 
scape, with an almost life-size Abraham sacrificing 
a quite life-size Isaac on one side, and on the other, 
a colonial gentleman in the resplendent uniform of 
the King, with a crown painted on his holster, 
riding a most remarkable steed. It is needless to 
say that the proud and delighted family who owned 
the house did not go to the expense of a new wall- 
paper. This is the house, too, which had the 
honor of having Benjamin Franklin attach to it 
the first lightning-rods to be tried in the State. 




CELI A THAXTER S 



portraits reaching from the floor to the ceiling, or 
from the high wooden dado to the ceiling. Or 
perhaps there will be no portraits and no dado, 
because the walls are paneled in wood from top to 
bottom, with no wall-paper at all. In the hall of 



But, whatever there may be on the walls, there 
is sure to be a broad and lovely staircase, with 
a landing half-way up, where a great window with 
a tempting window-seat looks out upon the garden. 
And hanging from the stairs, vou will see four 



A C I T V F O LI) HOMESTEA 1) S . 



[November. 



ancient fire-buckets with the family name on them, 
kept since the days when the law obliged people 
to have them, with two bags, each holding two 
bushels, for the removal of valuables, because 
there were then no steam fire-engines. On the first 
floor there will be several living-rooms : a parlor, 
whose carpet was first put down fifty-six years ago, 
when it was imported from Europe as part of the 
wedding preparations for a young bride coming 
into the family ; a library, with old bookcases, and 
desks, the contents of which you shall hear later, 



had to send for it to Delft, in Holland, where it was 
made. The quaint furniture of these rooms would 
not probably seem to you very quaint ; for it is so 
beautiful in form and finish, so "sincere," as art- 
ists will tell you, that modern upholsterers are do- 
ing their best to imitate it, and, wherever you live, 
you have probably seen some like it. 

But the dining-room ! this is the real center of 
the lower floor. I know one of these dining-rooms, 
long and narrow, which with only one window had 
eight doors. One of these doors led to a secret 







ONE OF THE OLDEST. 



with perhaps a door, on one panel of which all the 
letters of the alphabet are carved in a monogram in 
relief, with panels of wood let into the walls above 
the doors, on which whole scenes from the Bible 
have been exquisitely carved; and a sitting-room 
with its immense fireplace where great logs burn 
on brass andirons, with a great high narrow man- 
tel-piece beautifully carved and painted white, and 
with genuine old Dutch tiles, sometimes three rows 
of them, set in their places when people could not 
buy that kind of decorative art on Broadway, but 



staircase, — oh, such a grand place for playing En- 
chanted Castle, or pirates, or even plain hide-and- 
seek, especially now that a modern portiire hides 
the door as well as the staircase ! Most of the 
other doors led into closets — the great closets 
stored with china so beautiful that it all might be 
put nowadays behind glass doors in the parlor. 
In one of these, great blue platters line the walls 
with such a feast of color that I like to sit down 
opposite the door and make somebody open it sud- 
denly and dazzle my eyes with the wealth of deep 



A CITY OF OLD HOMESTEADS. 




rich blue. The big round pewter platter, 
on which the whole of a "boiled dinner" 
used to be sent up, now hangs on the wall 
as a curious plaque; but the shelves are lined with 
queer coffee-pots, and great mugs, — with perhaps 
a china frog, life-size and raised from the bottom in 
relief so that whoever drank from them would find 
this creature staring up at him from the bottom as if 
alive, — and dear little custard-cups, and wonderful, 
wonderful teacups ! And then the silver ; not only 
the old-fashioned urns and teapots and creamers, 
but the darling little teaspoons marked curiously 

with three initials in this way : ». \, — meaning 

that this was the silver of the Hooker family, and 
that the particular Hookers for whom these tea- 
spoons were made were your great-grandfather and 
great-grandmother, Michael and Mary. 

Out in the kitchen you may still see the great 
brick oven which used to be heated by building a 
fire of wood in it, — when the bricks were hot, 
all the ashes were raked out. Just as she went to 
bed, the cook would put her bean-pots of beans, 
her brown bread and white, her pies and puddings 
and cake, all at once, right into the oven where 
the fire had been, and the heat of the bricks would 
cook them all, gently and thoroughly, so that 
when she came down in the morning she would 
find her day's baking all done ! People will tell 



you that noth- 
ing nowadays 
tastes so good 
as things that 
were cooked 

in those old ovens ; but I notice they all have a 
fine new modern range close at hand, and that the 
brick ovens are kept as a matter of sentiment for 
Thanksgiving Day. 

Before we leave the lower floor, I must tell you 
of one parlor at Berwick, with a wall-paper on it 
that is known to have been there over a hundred 
years. Of course it was brought from England, 
and it must have been a very expensive thing ; for 
instead of one little figure, designed to fill perhaps 
a foot of space, and then repeated all over the 
wall, this is one consecutive landscape, running 
around the room, without one of its figures repeated 
a single time ! There was not room on the wall for 
even the whole of one of the ships ; so the tops of 
the masts seem to disappear through the ceiling, 
and may be supposed to run up through the floor 
of the chamber above. 

Upstairs you will find spindle-legged toilet- 
tables, bureaus with brass handles, revolving 
washstands, and great high beds with canopies 



A CITY OF OLD HOMESTEADS. 



[November, 




THE OLD SHERBURNE HOUSE (COLONIAL). 



and curtains ; but the gem of the house is up 
still another flight, — the gem of the house is the 
garret ! 

Here, first, are the trunks : the hair trunks, with 
the owners' initials in brass nails, and the queer 
portmanteau in which the eldest son packed his 
things when he went to Harvard. How many of 
your elder brothers, do you suppose, would think 
they could carry their "things" for college in a 
single thin portmanteau? Here, too, is the dear 
little trunk, hardly bigger than you think now 
you must have for your Paris dolls, which was 
fastened on at the back of the chaise in which 
your grandfather and grandmother made their 
wedding-tour from Portsmouth to Boston, before 
there were any railroads. If you open some of 
these trunks, you will find rare displays of great 
fans almost as big as those we put now in front of 
the fireplace, huge bonnets and perhaps a great 
green calash, and pieces of really exquisite em- 
broidery that would be no disgrace to our modern 
decorative art rooms. I don't mean any of the 
old-fashioned worsted work, nor the tombs with 
weeping-willows, nor even the fine old samplers 
of the past, but work done just as it is now 
done, with beautifully shaded silks and flosses, 



and " effects" not unlike those that appear in some 
of Mrs. Holmes's wonderful works to-day. Some of 
these have been framed and hung downstairs ; but 
one that was never finished I have seen laid away 
with the needle still in it, just as it was left by the 
embroiderer, now many years in her grave. Woe 
to the careless visitor who should happen to draw 
out that needle ! Indeed, I think none of us would 
offer to finish the embroidery, or guarantee stitches 
as dainty. 

Here in one corner is the great green cotton 
umbrella, the first one ever used in the family, 
four or five times as large as those we carry now. 
And yonder, on the wall, hangs the copper warm- 
ing-pan, that, when any one was ill, in the days 
when people slept in rooms so cold that the water 
froze in the pitchers, used to be filled, first with a 
layer of ashes and then with a layer of hot coals, 
and moved around and around between the sheets 
to take off the awful chill. Here are the little foot- 
stoves that used to be carried by a handle every 
Sunday to church, and the tinder-boxes with which 
they struck a light before ever there were matches. 
Cabinets lean against the wall, a little too shabby 
to be left downstairs, but with inlaid work so fine 
and delicate that it would cost a small fortune to 



rSS6.J 



A C I T V OF OLD HOMESTEADS. 



put them in complete repair. In the smoke-closet 
built against the chimney the family ham used to 
be smoked every winter. In it now are stored 
away the tin kitchen, in which meat used to be 
roasted before the open lire, and the crane that 
used to hang in the big fireplace of the "sitting- 
room," and the candle-molds for the time when 
every family made its own candles. Think of it ! 
And there on the shelves are piles upon piles of 
newspapers, from the days when a newspaper was 
something to be preserved with care. 

And at nightfall, when after sunset the cool, 
dewy air brings out all the faint, sweet odors of 
the flowers, we shall wander down in the garden 
among beds of phlox and love-lies-bleeding, 
between rows of tall holly- 
hocks and sunflowers. We 
shall not pick any of the 
roses, for those are gathered 
in the morning with the dew 
on them. We are going to 
make rose-water next week, 
kindling the little wood fire 
under the gypsy kettle out- 
of-doors, and distilling the 
delicate perfume of our own 
garden in the summer to last 
us all through the winter. 
Every morning for a month 
we have been picking the 
roses, — one morning there 
were five hundred and forty, — 
and shaking the petals off into 
a great firkin. No, we must 
leave the roses and wander 
on to the little summer-house 
at the foot of the garden, near 
the pond that is more like a 
river than a pond, with its 
gates that let in or shut out 
the salt tides from the great 
river just beyond. 

But, if it should happen to 
be a rainy evening, we shall 
have a still better time. Then 
we shall go into the library 
and open the queer old book- 
cases and take down the copy 
of Milton that is a hundred 
and fifty years old, and the 
" Baxter's Saint's Rest," pub- 
lished in 1649, with its leaves 
eaten by a genuine bookworm. We shall turn over 
the old fashion-books and laugh at the gowns and 
coats that were very, very queer much less than a 
hundred years ago. Here are the old novels, some 
of them with the remarkable information on the 



title-pages that they are " By a Lady," and, best of 
all, here are the children's school-books. These 

are inscribed oh the fly-leaf as " Presented to " 

by his or her affectionate father or mother or 
friend, showing that the children of those days 
were expected to take school-books for presents. 
One c:f the funniest of these is a little grammar 
with pictures to illustrate the rules. To illustrate, 
for instance, active, passive, and neuter verbs, 
there is a picture of a father whipping his little 
boy, — the father is active, the boy is passive, and 
the mother, sitting by herself on a stool, looking on. 
but doing nothing, is neuter. 

If the books should give out, though they .never 
would, we can look over the half dozen old news- 




OF SIR WILLIAM PEPPEKF.LL AT KITTERY. 



papers that we brought down from the file in the 
garret. Here, in one of the date November 1. 
1823, I see a " note" to the effect that " Sir Wal- 
ter Scott is fitting up his house at Abbotsford with 



IO 



A CITY OF OLD HOMESTEADS. 



[November, 



notices of the public lotteries, by which Harvard 
College was at one time largely supported, the 
Legislature itself authorizing the lotteries by which 
thirty thousand dollars were raised for the build- 
ing of the dormitories " Stoughton " and " Hol- 
worthy " ! It is very funny, too, to find that our 
dear old town has kept not only her old elms and 
old homesteads, but her old grievances. Here are 
the people in 1807 complaining of the " odors from 
the South Mill Pond," just as they complained 
of the same thing in this morning's Chronicle. In- 
deed, in many ways the newspaper hardly seems 
old. The advertisements contain precisely the 
same names as to-day. In the " Marriages " we 
read the notice of the marriage of the lady to 
whose granddaughter's wedding we went yester- 
day ; a famous bull is advertised from the same 
farm which is advertising the same thing nowa- 
days ; the father of one of our most famous Boston 
surgeons advertises that in t lie afternoons he will 
" extract and replace teeth, fill and repair defect- 
ive ones, and perform all other operations of a 
surgeon-dentist." 

Last of all, we shall open the old desk. Here is 
a treasure-trove, indeed. I must have convinced 
you, I think, that nothing that ever entered this 
house was ever lost or torn or injured ; so we are 
not surprised to come across even little scraps of 
waste paper with the names of people invited to an 
evening party in 1829, with marks against those 
who accepted the invitation. Here is a little box 
of some black pasty stuff with which they used 
to mark those wonderful handkerchiefs, as fine as 
cobwebs and as large as small table-cloths, hemmed 
with stitches that perhaps you could discover with 
a microscope. We had the curiosity once to try 
some of it on a bit of cloth, and, though it is 
known to have lain in that desk forty years at 
least, it was soft and black and distinct as ever. 
In one pigeon-hole are files of the bills for the 
children's schooling. From the time she was six 
years old until she was eleven, your grandmother's 
bills for instruction in the best school the town af- 
forded read thus : 



Mr. Alden's Academy for Young Ladies. 
Conditions: i. One dollar, at entrance, which is to be paid only 
once by the same pupil, however long she may attend this institution. 

2. Thirty cents a week, from the time of entrance to the time of 
leaving the Academy. 

3. Mr. Alden is at the expense of providing a convenient build- 
ing, tables, benches, inkstands, and ink. 



Miss to Timothy Alden, Jr. Dr. 

To instruction, at thirty cents a week, Dolls. Cents. 
Nineteen weeks 5 70 

After she was eleven, the bills are a little more 
elaborate, thus : 



Rev. Mr. Alden's Academy. 
Conditions. 

1. One dollar to be paid by each pupil on entering. 

2. The masters pay seven dollars a quarter. 

3. Those misses who attend to the working of muslin and em- 
broidery pay seven dollars, and the rest six dollars, a quarter. 

4. 'The room rent is assessed equally on the pupils. 

Dolls. Cents. 

To instruction, one quarter 7 00 

To room rent. o 25 

To books and stationery 1 09^.' 

8 34'= 

At the close of the term, printed "Rewards of 

Merit" were issued, stating that Miss ''has 

repeated, memoriter, the questions and answers 
throughout the Principles of Religion and Moral- 
ity, which are composed in about seventy duodeci- 
mo pages," or that " during the quarter just closed. 

Miss finished repeating, memoriter, select 

parts of Mason's Self Knowledge to the amount of 
two thousand eight hundred and ninety lines." 

In another pigeon-hole are little notes written 
by the young gentlemen of the town to invite the 
young ladies of the family to drive with them, and 
here — take them up very tenderly — are your 
grandfather's love-letters. 

Not exactly love-letters ; not what in these days 
of impassioned rhetoric we should call love-letters. 
I think we may venture to open them and take just 
one peep ; for even the love-letters of those days 
were so formal and stately that they were hardly 
too sacred for even a stranger to read. And well 
might they consider the chances of their being 
read by people far less entitled to the privilege than 
the great-grandchildren of the lady to whom they 
were addressed : for in those days there were no 
envelopes ; nor were there steamers to carry the 
mails. Your grandfather, who was in Sweden, 
would hand his sheet of paper, carefully folded and 
fastened with red wax, to the master of some slow 
sailing-vessel, and it would take its chances, sent 
in November, 1812, of being indorsed in your 
grandmother's delicate hand as "received April, 

1813." They all are addressed to " Miss , 

Esteemed Friend," and signed, " Your most obedi- 
ent and humble servant." In one of them he is a 
little disappointed at not having heard from her. 
He is not distressed lest she should have removed 
from him the " friendship " with which she 
"honored him" before he left; but he is sorry 
that a letter has been lost. Did he ever receive it ? 
There is no record of it, but I think he did receive that 
or another just as good. Certainly she never removed 
her "friendship" from him; for her portrait, 
painted sixty years later, hangs beside his on the 
wall above us ; and are not we, sitting around 
the same fireplace where they sat, sons and sons' 



THE K N A V I S II KITE. 



I I 



wives and grandsons, what Dr. Holmes would call 
the "wonderful echoes of that maiden's 'Yes' " ' 

Still, I wish we could find a record of its being 
received. But we will not hunt for it. After all. 
the letters are too sacred even for us to read. 



Simple as they are, there is a heart-beat in every 
word, and those heart-beats were not for us ! Let 
us tie them reverently together again, and put 
them quietly back where they have rested for two 
generations. 



JINGLES. 



" Chirr-a-whirr ! " the squirrel says, 
" My boy, you can't catch me ! 

Before you reach the lowest bough, 

I 'm to the top of the tree." 

I think." said the wren to the jay-bird. 
Your dress is very fine ; 

But for work and play, you should lay it away 
For a plainer one like mine." 



If you would have your learning stay, 
Be patient ; don't learn too fast. 
The man who travels a mile each day 
Will get round the world at last. 

Love you best the budding Spring, 
Or gay Summer's blossoming ? 
Which is to your heart most dear. 
Autumn hues or Winter cheer? 




imb. knWv ism Kirfe 

it JT.. t'ri; S»( .' V- i ..vl -. I. "I I 



/^Thcre once uias ex KnctVJgF) of^ ~Kile 
Vy^oge actions ajere terrible Quite . 
Tor he iofc^ a poor cftreK. 
H15 Pa uxxntea" Fjim oiueK. , 
~Jjl Alio tfjen qfoB&Ieo firm up at one Blfe . 

~ WMim 




..lit, 



THE BLIND LARK. 



[November, 





;h up in an old house, full 
of poor people, lived Lizzie, ./' 
with her mother and baby Billy. 
The street was a narrow, noisy 
place, where carts rumbled and 
dirty children played ; where the 
sun seldom shone, the fresh wind seldom blew, and 
the white snow of winter was turned at once to 
black mud. One bare room was Lizzie's home, 
and out of it she seldom went, for she was a pris- 
oner. We all pity the poor princesses who were shut 
up in towers by bad fairies, the men and women 
in jails, and the little birds in cages, but Lizzie 
was a sadder prisoner than any of these. 

The prince always comes to the captive prin- 
cess, the jail doors open in time, and the birds 
find some kind hand to set them free ; but there 
seemed no hope of escape for this poor child. 
Only nine years old, and condemned to life-long 
helplessness, loneliness, and darkness — for she was 
blind. 

She could dimly remember the blue sky, green 
earth, and beautiful sun ; for the light went out 
when she was six, and the cruel fever left her 
a pale little shadow to haunt that room ever since. 
The father was dead, the mother worked hard 
for daily bread, they had no friends, and the good 
fairies seemed to have forgotten them. Still, like 
the larks one sees in Brittany, the eyes of which 
cruel boys put out, that they may sing the sweeter, 
Lizzie made music in her cage, singing to baby ; 
and when he slept, she sat by the window listen- 
ing to the noise below for company, crooning 
to herself till she, too, fell asleep and forgot the 
long, long days that had no play, no school, no 
change for her such as other children know. 



- £m 



Every morning 
Mother gave them 
their porridge, 
-•' ; locked the door, 

and went away to work, leaving something for the 
children's dinner, and Lizzie to take care of herself 
and Billy till night. There was no other way, for 
both were too helpless to be trusted elsewhere, and 
there was no one to look after them. But Lizzie 
knew her way about the room, and could find the 
bed, the window, and the table where the bread 
and milk stood. There was seldom any fire in 
the stove, and the window was barred, so the little 
prisoners were safe, and day after day they lived to- 
gether a sad, solitary, unchildlike life that makes 
one's heart ache to think of. 

Lizzie watched over Billy like a faithful little 
mother, and Billy did his best to bear his trials, 
and comfort sister, like a man. He was not a rosy, 
rollicking fellow, like most year-old boys, but pale 
and thin and quiet, with a pathetic look in his big 
blue eyes, as if he said, "Something is wrong: 
will some one kindly put it right for us?" But he 
seldom complained unless in pain, and would lie for 
hours on the old bed, watching the flies, which were 
his only other playmates, stretching out his little 
hands to the few rays of sunshine that crept in now 
and then, as if longing for them, like a flower in a 
cellar. When Lizzie sung, he hummed softly ; and 
when he was hungry, cold, or tired, he called " Lib ! 
Lib!" meaning "Lizzie," and nestled up to her, 
forgetting all his baby woes in her tender arms. 

Seeing her so fond and faithful, the poor neigh- 
bors loved as well as pitied her, and did what they 
could for the afflicted child. The busy women 
would pause at the locked door to ask if all was 
right ; the dirty children brought her dandelions 



iSS6.] 



THE BLIND L A R 



from the park, and the rough workmen of the fac- 
tory opposite, with a kind word would toss an apple 
or a cake through the open window. They had 
learned to look for the little wistful face behind the 
bars, and loved to listen to the childish voice which 
caught and imitated the songs they sung and whis- 
tled, like a sweet echo. They called her "the blind 
lark," and, though she never knew it, many were 
the better for the pity they gave her. 

Baby slept a great deal, for life offered him few 
pleasures, and, like a small philosopher, he wisely 
tried to forget the troubles which he could not 
cure; so Lizzie had nothing to do but sing, and 
try to imagine how the world looked. She had no 
one to tell her, and the few memories grew dimmer 
and dimmer each year. She did not know how to 
work or to play, never having been taught, and 
Mother was too tired at night to do anything but 
get supper and go to bed. 

" The child will be an idiot soon, if she does not 
die," people said ; and it seemed as if this would 
be the fate of the poor little girl, since no one came 
to save her during those three weary years. She 
often said, '•I'm of some use. I take care of 
Billy, and I could n't live without him." 

But even this duty and delight was taken from 
her, for that cold spring nipped the poor little 
flower, and one day Billy shut his blue eyes with a 
patient sigh and left her all alone. 

Then Lizzie's heart seemed broken, and people 
thought she would soon follow him, now that her 
one care and comfort was gone. All day she laid 
with her cheek on Billy's pillow, holding the bat- 
tered tin cup and a little worn-out shoe, and it was 
pitiful to hear her sing the old lullabies as if baby 
still could hear them. 

"It will be a mercy if the poor thing does n't live; 
blind folks are no use and a sight of trouble," said 
one woman to another as they gossiped in the 
hall after calling on the child during her mother's 
absence, for the door was left unlocked since she 
was ill. 

" Yes, Mrs. Davis would get on nicely if she 
had n't such a burden. Thank Heaven, my chil- 
dren are n't blind," answered the other, hugging 
her baby closer as she went away. 

Lizzie heard them, and hoped with all her sad 
little soul that death would set her free, since she 
was of no use in the world. To go and be with 
Billy was all her desire now, and she was on her 
way to him. growing daily weaker and more con- 
tent to be dreaming of dear baby well and happy, 
waiting for her somewhere in a lovely place called 
Heaven. 

The summer vacation came, and hundreds of 
eager children were hurrying away to the mountains 
and seashore for two months of healthful pleasure. 



Even the dirty children in the lane felt the approach 
of berry-time, and rejoiced in their freedom from 
cold as they swarmed like flies about the corner 
grocery where over-ripe fruit was thrown out for 
them to scramble over. 

Lizzie heard about good times when some of these 
young neighbors were chosen to go on the poor 
children's picnics, and came back with big sand- 
wiches buttoned up in their jackets ; pickles, pea- 
nuts, and buns in their pockets; hands full of faded 
flowers, and hearts brimming over with childish 
delight at a day in the woods. She listened with 
a faint smile, enjoyed the " woodsy " smell of the 
green things, and wondered if they had nice picnics 
in Heaven, being sorry that Billy had missed them 
here. But she did not seem to care much, or hope 
for any pleasure for herself except to see baby again. 

I think there were few sadder sights in that great 
city than this innocent prisoner waiting so patiently 
to be set free. Would it be by the gentle angel of 
death, or one of the human angels who keep these 
little sparrows from falling to the ground ? 

One hot August day, when not a breath came 
into the room, and the dust and noise and evil 
smells were almost unendurable, poor Lizzie lav on 
her bed singing feebly to herself about " the beau- 
tiful blue sea." She was trying to get to sleep that 
she might dream of a cool place, and her voice 
was growing fainter and fainter, when suddenly it 
seemed as if the dream had come, for a sweet odor 
was near, something damp and fresh touched her 
feverish cheek, and a kind voice said in her ear : 

" Here is the little bird I Ye been following. 
Will you have some flowers, dear ? " 

"Is it Heaven? Where's Billy?" murmured 
Lizzie, groping about her, half awake. 

" Not yet. I 'm not Billy, but a friend who 
carries flowers to little children who can not go and 
get them. Don't be afraid, but let me sit and tell 
you about it," answered the voice, as a gentle hand 
took hers. 

" I thought, may be, I 'd died, and I was glad, for 
I do want to see Billy so much. He 's baby, you 
know." And the clinging hands held the kind one 
fast till it filled them with a gre;<t bunch of roses 
that seemed to bring all summer into the close, 
hot room with their sweetness. 

" Oh, how nice ! how nice ! I never had such a 
lot. They 're bigger V better 'n dandelions, are n't 
they ? What a good lady you must be to go 'round 
giving folks posies like these ! " cried Lizzie, trying 
to realize the astonishing fact. 

Then, while the new friend fanned her, she lay 
luxuriating in her roses, and listening to the sweet 
story of the Flower Mission which, like many other 
pleasant things, she knew nothing of in her prison. 
Presently she told her own little tale, never guess- 



i4 



TIIK BLIND LARK. 



[November, 



ing how pathetic it was, till, lifting her hand to 
touch the new face, she found it wet with tears. 

"Are you sorry for me?" she asked. "Folks 
are very kind, but I 'm a burden, you know, and 
I 'd better die and go to Billy ; 1 was some use to 
him, but I never can be to any one else. I heard 
'em say so, and poor 
Mother would do better 
if I was n't here." 

" My child. I know a 
little blind girl who is 
no burden but a great 
help to her mother, and 
a happy, useful creature, 
as you might be if you 
were taught and helped 
as she was," went on the 
voice, sounding more 
than ever like a good 
fairy's as it told fresh 
wonders till Lizzie was 
sure it must be all a 
dream. 

"Who taught her? 
Could I do it? Where's 
the place?" she asked, 
sitting erect in her eager- 
ness, like a bird that 
hears a hand at the door 
of its cage. 

Then, with the com- 
fortable arm around 
her, the roses stirring 
with the flutter of her 
heart, and the sightless 
eyes looking up as if 
they could see the face 
of the deliverer, Lizzie 
heard the wonderful sto- 
ry of the House Beauti- 
ful standing white and 
spacious on the hill, with 
the blue sea before it, 
the fresh wind always 
blowing, the green gar- 
dens and parksall about, 
and, inside, music, hap- 
py voices, shining faces, 
busy hands, and year 
after year the patient 
teaching by those who dedicate themselves to this 
noble and tender task. 

" 1 1 must be better 'n Heaven ! " cried Lizzie, as she 
heard of work and play, health and happiness, love 
and companionship, usefulness and independence, — 
all the dear rights and simple joys young creatures 
hunger for, and perish, soul and body, without. 



It was too much for her little mind to grasp at 
once, and she lay as if in a blissful dream long 
after the kind visitor had gone, promising to come 
again and to find some way for Lizzie to enter into 
that lovely place where darkness is changed to light. 

That visit was like magic medicine, and the 




KIND VOICE SAID: 



' WILL YOU HAVE SOME FLOWERS, DEAR 



child grew better at once, for hope was born in her 
heart. The heavy gloom seemed to lift, discom- 
forts were easier to bear, and solitude was peopled 
now with troops of happy children living in that 
wonderful place where blindness was not a burden. 
She told it all to her mother, and the poor woman 
tried to believe it, but said, sadly : 



THE Ul.IND LARK. 



15 



" Don't set your heart on it, child. It 's easy to 
promise and to forget. Rich folks don't trouble 
themselves about poor folks if they can help it." 

But Lizzie's faith never wavered, though the 
roses faded as day after day went by and no one 
came. The mere thought that it was possible to 
teach blind people to work and study and play 
seemed to give her strength and courage. She 
got up and sat at the window again, singing to 
herself as she watched and waited, with the dead 
flowers carefully arranged in Bilk's mug, and a 
hopeful smile on the little white face behind the 
bars. 

Every one was glad she was better, and nodded 
to one another as they heard the soft crooning, 
like a dove's coo, in the pauses of the harsher 
noises that tilled the street. The workmen tossed 
her sweeties and whistled their gayest airs, the 
children brought their dilapidated toys to amuse 
her, and one woman came every day to put her 
baby in Lizzie's lap, it was such a pleasure to her 
to feel the soft little body in the loving arms that 
longed for Billy. 

Poor Mother went to her work in better spirits, 
and the long, hot days were less oppressive as she 
thought, while she scrubbed, of Lizzie up again; 
for she loved her helpless burden, heavy though 
she found it. 

When Saturday came around, it rained hard, 
and no one expected " the flower lady." Even Liz- 
zie said, with a patient sigh and a hopeful smile : 

"I don't believe she'll come; but, may be, it 
will clear up, and then I guess she will." 

It did not clear up, but the flower lady came, 
and as the child sat listening to the welcome 
sound of her steps, her quick ear caught the tread 
of two pairs of feet, the whisper of two voices, and 
presently two persons came in to fill her hands 
with midsummer flowers. 

"This is Minna, the little girl I told you of. 
She wanted to see you very much, so we paddled 
away like a pair of ducks, and here we are," said 
Miss Grace gayly ; and as she spoke Lizzie felt soft 
fingers glide over her face, and a pair of childish 
lips find and kiss her own. The groping touch, 
the hearty kiss, made the blind children friends at 
once, and, dropping her flowers, Lizzie hugged 
the new-comer, trembling with excitement and 
delight. Then they talked, and how the tongues 
went as one asked questions and the other an- 
swered them, while Miss Grace sat by enjoying 
the happiness of those who do not forget the poor, 
but seek them out to save and bless. 

Minna had been for a year a pupil in the happy 
school, where she was taught to see with her 
hands, as one might say ; and the tales she told 
of the good times there made Lizzie cry eagerly: 



" Can I go ? Oh, can I go ? " 

" Alas, no, not yet," answered Miss Grace 
sadly. " I find that children under ten can not 
be taken, and there is no place for the little ones 
unless kind people care for them." 

Lizzie gave a wail, and hid her face in the pil- 
low, feeling as if she could not bear the dreadful 
disappointment. 

Minna comforted her, and Miss Grace went on 
to say that generous people were trying to get 
another school for the small children, that all the 
blind children were working hard to help on the 
plan, that money was coming in, and soon they 
hoped to have a pleasant place for every child 
who needed help. 

Lizzie's tears stopped falling as she listened, for 
hope was not quite gone. 

* ' I '11 not be ten till next June, and I don't see 
how I can wait 'most a year. Will the little school 
be ready 'fore then ? " she asked. 

"I fear not, dear, but I will see that the long 
waiting is made as easy as possible, and perhaps 
you can help us in some way," answered Miss 
Grace, anxious to atone for her mistake in speak- 
ing about the school before she had made sure 
that Lizzie could go. 

"Oh, I 'd love to help; only I can't do any- 
thing," sighed the child. 

" You can sing, and that is a lovely way to help. 
I heard of 'the blind lark.' as they call you, and 
when I came to find her, your little voice led me 
straight to the door of the cage. That door 1 
mean to open and let you hop out into the sun- 
shine ; then, when you are well and strong, I hope 
you will help us get the home for other little 
children who else must wait years before they 
find the light. Will you?" 

As Miss Grace spoke, it was beautiful to see the 
clouds lift from Lizzie's wondering face, till it 
shone with the sweetest beauty any face can wear, 
the happiness of helping others. She forgot her 
own disappointment in the new hope that came, 
and held on to the bed-post as if the splendid plan 
were almost too much for her. 

" Could I help that way ? " she cried. '" Would 
anybody care to hear me sing? Oh, how I 'd love 
to do anything for the poor little ones who will 
have to wait." 

"You shall. I 'm sure the hardest heart would 
be touched by your singing, if you look as you do 
now. We need something new' for our fair and 
concert, and by that time you will be ready," said 
Miss Grace, almost afraid she had said too much; 
for the child looked so frail, it seemed as if even 
joy would hurt her. 

Fortunately her mother came in just then, and, 
while the lady talked to her, Minna's childish 



i6 



THE LLIND LARK, 



[November, 



chatter soothed Lizzie so well that when they left 
she stood at the window smiling down at them 
and singing like the happiest bobolink that ever 
tilted on a willow branch in spring-time. 

All the promises were kept, and soon a new life 
began for Lizzie. A better room and well-paid 
work were found for Mrs. Davis. Minna came as 
often as she could to cheer up her little friend, and, 
best of all, Miss Grace taught her to sing, that by 
and by the little voice might plead with its pathetic 
music for others less blest than she. So the winter 
months went by, and Lizzie grew like mayfiowers 
underneath the snow, getting ready to look up, 
sweet and rosy, when spring set her free and called 
her to be glad. She counted the months and 
weeks, and when the time dwindled to days, she 
could hardly sleep or eat for thinking of the happy 
hour when she could go to be a pupil in the school 
where miracles were worked. 

Her birthday was in June, and, thanks to Miss 
Grace, her coming was celebrated by one of the 
pretty festivals of the school, called Daisy Day. 
Lizzie knew nothing of this surprise, and when her 
friends led her up the long flight of steps she 
looked like a happy little soul climbing to the gates 
of Heaven. 

Mr. Constantine, the ruler of this small king- 
dom, was a man whose fatherly heart had room 
for every suffering child in the world, and it re- 
joiced over every one who came, though the great 
house was overflowing and many waited as Lizzie 
had done. 

He welcomed her so kindly that the strange 
place seemed like home at once, and Minna led 
her away to the little mates who proudly showed 
her their small possessions and filled her hands 
with the treasures children love, while pouring into 
her ears delightful tales of the study, work, and 
play that made their lives so happy. 

Lizzie was bewildered, and held fast to Minna, 
whose motherly care of her was sweet to see. 
Kind teachers explained rules and duties with the 
patience that soothes fear and wins love, and soon 
Lizzie began to feel that she was a " truly pupil " 
in this wonderful school where the blind could read, 
sew, study, sing, run, and play. Boys raced along 
the galleries and up and down the stairs as boldly 
as if all had eyes. Girls swept and dusted like 
tidy housewives ; little fellows hammered and 
sawed in the workshop and never hurt themselves ; 
small girls sewed on pretty work as busy as bees, 
and in the schoolroom lessons went on as if both 
teachers and pupils were blessed with eyes. 

Lizzie could not understand it. and was content 
to sit and listen wherever she was placed, while her 
little fingers fumbled at the new objects near her. 
and her hungry mind opened like a flower to 



the sun. She had no tasks that day, and in the 
afternoon was led away with a flock of children, all 
chattering like magpies, on the grand expedition. 
Every year, when the fields were white with daisies, 
these poor little souls were let loose among them 
to enjoy the holy day of this child's flower. All. 
but was n't it a pretty sight to see the meeting be- 
tween them, when the meadows were reached and 
the children scattered far and wide with cries of joy 
as they ran and rolled in the white sea, or filled 
their eager hands, or softly felt for the dear daisies 
and kissed them like old friends ! The flowers 
seemed to enjoy it, too, as they danced and nod- 
ded, while the wind rippled the long grass like 
waves of a green sea, and the sun smiled as if he 
said : 

''Here 's the sort of thing I like to see. Why 
don't I find more of it ?" 

Lizzie's face looked like a daisy, it was so full 
of light as she stood looking up with the wide 
brim of her new hat like the white petals all round 
it. She did not run nor shout, but went slowly 
wading through the grass, feeling the flowers 
touch her hands, yet picking none, for it was hap- 
piness enough to know that they were there. Pres- 
ently she sat down and let them tap her cheeks 
and rustle about her ears as though telling secrets 
that made her smile. Then, as if weary with so 
much happiness, she lay back and let the daisies 
hide her with their pretty coverlet. 

Miss Grace was watching over her, but left her 
alone, and by and by, like a lark from its nest in 
the grass, the blind girl sent up her little voice, 
singing so sweetly that the children gathered around 
to hear, while they made chains and tied up their 
nosegays. 

This was Lizzie's first concert, and no little 
prima donna was ever more pelted with flowers 
than she ; for when she had sung all her songs, new 
and old, a daisy crown was put upon her head, a 
tall flower for a scepter in her hand, and all the 
boys and girls danced around her as if she had 
been Queen of the May. 

A little feast came out of the baskets, that they 
might be empty for the harvest to be carried home, 
and, while they ate, stories were told and shouts of 
laughter filled the air, for all w-ere as merry as if 
there was no darkness, pain, or want in the world. 
Then they had games, and Lizzie was taught to 
play, for till now she never knew what a good 
romp meant. Her cheeks grew rosy, her sad little 
face waked up, she ran and tumbled with the rest, 
and actually screamed, to Minna's great delight. 

Two or three of the children could see a little, 
and these were very helpful in taking care of the 
little ones. Miss Grace found them playing some 
game with Lizzie, and observed that all but she 



THE B L I N D L A K K . 



17 



were blindfolded. When she asked why, one 
whispered, "We thought we should play fairer if 
we were all alike." And another added, "It 
seems somehow as if we were proud if we see better 
than the rest. " 

Lizzie was much touched by this sweet spirit, 
and a little later showed that she had already 



little mind, — a lovely page, illustrated with flowers, 
kind faces, sunshine, and happy hopes. The new 
life was so full, so free, she soon fell into her place 
and enjoyed it all. People worked there so heart- 
ily, so helpfully, it was no wonder things went as 
if by magic, and the poor little creatures who 
came in so afflicted went out in some years inde- 
pendent people, ready to help themselves and 
often to benefit others. 

There is no need to tell all Lizzie learned and 




learned one lesson in the school, 
when she gathered about her 
some who had never seen, and 
told them what she could re- 
member of green fields and 
daisy-balls before the light went 
out forever. 

" Surely my little lark was 
worth saving, if only for this 
one happy day," thought Miss 
Grace, as she watched the 
awakened look in the blind faces, all leaning toward 
the speaker, whose childish story pleased them well. 

In all her long and useful life, Lizzie never forgot 
that Daisy Day, for it seemed as if she were born 
anew, and, like a butterfly, had left the dark chrysa- 
lis all behind her then. It was the first page of the 
beautiful book just opening before the eyes of her 
Vol. XIV. — 2. 



" WHEN THE VIOLINS BEGAN TO PLAY, 
LIZZIE FORGOT THE CROWD AND SANG 
HER SONG IN CLEAR SWEET TONES." 

enjoyed that summer, nor how 
proud her mother was when 
she heard her read in the curi- 
ous books, making eyes of the 
little fingers that felt their way 
along so fast, when she saw 
the neat stitches she set, the 
pretty clay things she mod- 
eled, the tidy way she washed 
dishes, swept and dusted, and 
helped keep her room in order. 
But the poor woman's heart 
was too full for words when she 
heard the child sing, — not as before, in the dreary 
room, sad, soft lullabies to Billy, — but beautiful, 
gay songs, with flutes and violins to lift and carry 
the little voice along on waves of music. 

Lizzie really had a great gift, but she was never 
happier than when they all sang together, or when 
she sat quietly listening to the band as they prac- 



i8 



THE B L I N D L A R K . 



[November, 



ticed for the autumn concert. She was to have a 
part in it, and the thought that she could help to 
earn money for the Kindergarten made the shy 
child bold and glad to do her part. Many people 
knew her now, for she was very pretty, with the 
healthful roses in her cheeks, curly yellow hair, 
and great blue eyes that seemed to see. Her 
mates and teachers were proud of her, for, though 
she was not as quick as some of the pupils, her 
sweet temper, grateful heart, and friendly little 
ways made her very dear to all, aside from the 
musical talent she possessed. 

Every one was busy over the fair and the con- 
cert ; and fingers Hew, tongues chattered, feet 
trotted, and hearts beat fast with hope and fear as 
the time drew near, for all were eager to secure a 
home for the poor children still waiting in dark- 
ness. It was a charity which appealed to all 
hearts when it was known ; but, in this busy world 
of ours, people have so many cares of their own that 
they are apt to forget the wants of others unless 
something brings these needs very clearly before 
their eyes. Much money was needed, and many 
ways had been tried to add to the growing fund, 
that all might be well done. 

" We wish to interest children in this charity 
for children, so that they may gladly give a part 
of their abundance to these poor little souls who 
have nothing. I think Lizzie will sing some of the 
pennies out of their pockets, which would other- 
wise go for bonbons. Let us try : so make her 
neat and pretty, and we '11 have a special song for 
her." 

Mr. Constantine said this, and Miss Grace car- 
ried out his wish so well that, when the time came, 
the little prima donna did her part better even 
than they had hoped. 

The sun shone splendidly on the opening day 
of the fair, and cars and carriages came rolling 
out from the city, full of friendly people with 
plump purses and the sympathetic interest we all 
take in such things when we take time to see, ad- 
mire, and reproach ourselves that we do so little 
for them. 

There were many children, and when they had 
bought the pretty handiwork of the blind needle- 
women, eaten cake and ices, wondered at the 
strange maps and books, twirled the big globe in 
the hall, and tried to understand how 50 many 
blind people could be so busy and so happy, they 
all were seated at last to hear the music, full of ex- 
pectation, for " the pretty little girl was going to 
sing." 

It was a charming concert, and every one en- 
joyed it, though many eyes grew dim as they wan- 
dered from the tall youths blowing the horns so 
sweetly, to the small ones chirping away like so 



many sparrows, for the blind faces made the sight 
pathetic, and such music touched the hearts as 
no other music can. 

"Now she 's coming!" whispered the eager 
children, as a little girl climbed up the steps and 
stood before them, waiting to begin. 

A slender little creature, in a blue gown, with 
sunshine falling on her pretty hair, a pleading 
look in the soft eyes that had no sign of blindness 
but their steadfastness, and a smile on the lips 
that trembled at first, for Lizzie's heart beat fast, 
and only the thought, " I 'm helping the poor 
little ones," gave her courage for her task. 

But, when the flutes and violins began to play 
like a whispering wind, she forgot the crowd be- 
fore her, and, lifting up her face, sang in clear sweet 
tones 

THE BLIND LARK'S SOXG. 

We are sitting in the shadow 

Of a long and lonely night, 
Waiting till some gentle angel 

Comes to lead us to the light. 
For we know there is a magic 

That can give eyes to the blind. 
Oh, well-filled hands, be generous ! 

Oh, pitying hearts, be kind ! 

Help stumbling feet that wander, 

To find the upward way ; 
Teach hands that now lie idle 

The joys of work and play. 
Let pity, love, and patience 

Our tender teachers be, 
That, though the eyes be blinded. 

The little souls may see. 

Your world is large and beautiful, 

Our prison dim and small ; 
We stand and wait, imploring — 
" Is there not room for all ? 
Give us our children's garden, 

Where we may safely bloom, 
Forgetting in God's sunshine 

Our lot of grief and gloom." 

A little voice comes singing, 

Oh, listen to its song! 
A little child is pleading 

For those who suffer wrong. 
Grant them the patient magic 

That gives eyes to the blind ! 
Oh, well-filled hands, be generous! 

Oh, pitying hearts, be kind ! 

It was a very simple little song, but it proved 
wonderfully effective, for Lizzie was so carried away 
by her own feeling that as she sang the last lines she 
stretched out her hands imploringly, and two great 
tears rolled down her cheeks. For a minute many 
hands were too busy fumbling for handkerchiefs to 
clap, but the children were quick to answer that 
gesture and those tears, and one impetuous little 
lad tossed a small purse containing his last ten cents 
at Lizzie's feet, the first contribution won by her 
innocent appeal. Then there was great applause, 



A SONG OF SINGERS. 



19 



and many of the flowers just bought were thrown 
to the little Lark, who was obliged to come back 
and sing again and again, smiling brightly as 
she dropped pretty curtsies, and sang song after 
song with all the added sweetness of a grateful 
heart. 

Hidden behind the organ, Miss Grace and Mr. 
Constantine shook hands joyfully, for this was the 
sort of interest they wanted, and they knew that 
while the children clapped and threw flowers, the 
wet-eyed mothers were thinking, self -reproachfully, 
" I must help this lovely charity," and the stout 
old gentlemen who pounded with their canes were 
resolving to go home and write some generous 
checks, which would be money invested in God's 
savings-bank. 

It was a very happy time for all, and made 
strangers friends in the sweet way which teaches 



heart to speak to heart. When the concert was 
over, Lizzie felt many hands press hers and leave 
something there, many childish lips kiss her own, 
with promises to " help about the Kindergarten," 
and her ears were full of kind voices thanking and 
praising her for doing her part so well. Still later. 
when all were gone, she proudly put the rolls of 
bills into Mr. Constantine's hand, and, throwing 
her arms about Miss Grace's neck, said, trembling 
with earnestness, " I 'm not a burden any more, 
and I can truly help ! How can I ever thank you 
both for making me so happy ? " 

One can fancy what their answer was and how- 
Lizzie helped ; for, long after the Kindergar : 
ten was filled with pale little flowers blooming 
slowly as she had done, the Blind Lark went on 
singing pennies out of pockets, and sweetly re- 
minding people not to forget this noble charity. 



A SONG OF SINGERS. 
By Ida Whipple Benham. 



I will sing you a song of singers: 

Listen, and you shall hear 
How the lark on high, in the breast of the sky, 

Sings to the opening year. 
In a still blue place for a moment's space 

All song from wing to crest, 
He sings in the sun — and the rapture done, 

Sinks to his silent nest. 

I will sing you a song of singers : 

Listen, and you shall hear 
How the wind of the south, with a sweet warm 
mouth, 
Sings in the heart of the year. 
It is hey ! for the fields of roses, and hey ! for the 
banks of thyme ; 
And hey ! for the shady closes with a lilt and 
a laughing rhyme ! 
And the lake will ruffle its bosom. 

And curl its foamy crest, 
When the murmuring sigh of the wind comes nigh 
The lilies upon its breast. 

I will sing you a song of singers : 

Listen, and you shall hear 
The song close hid of the katydid, 



In the falling of the year. 
Wide in the leafy ranges, 

He sings in the waning light, 
And his love-song knows few changes 

LInder the stars of night. 
Shrill in the forest reaches, 

In doublet of satin green, 
He sings, as his wild mood teaches, 

His one song to his queen. 

I will sing you a song of singers : 

Listen, and you shall hear 
The song of the snow, soft, soft and low, 

In the night-time of the year. 
Out of the deeps of heaven, 

All in a pure white glow, 
Under the stars of even, 

Sings the angel of the snow. 
And the heart must learn to listen 

And bend its wayward will. 
While the frost flakes glow and glisten 

And the winter air is chill. 
And the song is pure as pity. 

And glad as glad can be, — 
For an angel sings with brooding wings 

The song of charity- 



20 



SIXTEEN AND SIX. 



[November, 



SIXTEEN AND SIX. 





ister at the (Jasel sat, 
2fn the chair, W pussy-cat; 
v}oon u|>on trie canvas clear, 
]3ussy3 portrait <Ai3 dj^ear . 



/Out when^ister eft line room, 
Uu.ssy5 bortrait met its doom ; 
J^Ule Sister— nw&iy miss, 
(]7^de an aw |ul toucli - like "IB15 I . 



£ e 5fe 




VICTOR HUGOS TALES TO HIS GRANDCHILDREN. 



21 




ICTOR J-JuCc/s 
tales 






Hermit 



to Ibis 




the - '_ 
two 




iPatrM^ihfld iSA 



jK: 



^ 



By Brander Matthews. f coS 



Toward the end of May, 1885, there died in 
Paris the greatest of French poets — a great poet 
who was also a great novelist and a great dramatist; 
a great poet who had always a warm heart for the 
sick and the suffering ; who was always ready with 
strong words for the defense of the weak and the 
oppressed, and who was always very fond of little 
children. This great poet was Victor Hugo. He 
lived to be more than eighty years old ; and when 
he died, the city of Paris, which he had ever loved 
and splendidly praised in prose and verse, gave him 
the most magnificent funeral that a mourning peo- 
ple could give. His body lay in state under the 
Triumphal Arch built by Napoleon to commemo- 
rate the great deeds of the Grand Army. Thou- 
sands passed before the body of the poet to do it 
honor, and countless thousands filled the surround- 
ing avenues. When the day of the funeral came, 
the first place was reserved for two children, a 
little girl, Jeanne, and a little boy, Georges, the 
grandchildren of the great poet. [His own sons 
had died long before their father.] And through- 
out Paris men were offering for sale portraits of 
Victor Hugo holding Miss Jeanne and Master 
Georges on his knees. 

It was the sweet companionship of his little 
grandchildren that brightened and comforted the 
last years of the old poet's life. He who in his 
verses had never tired of singing of the joys of 
childhood and of the blessing of youth, found in his 
own old age a solace in the love of two little chil- 
dren. They lived with him, and they ruled the 
house with a rod of iron. As became a grandfather, 
he was very indulgent ; and the grandchildren 
might easily have been spoiled had it not been for 
the watchful care of their mother, and for their 



own frank and kindly dispositions. The grand- 
father, who had not come into his second childhood, 
although he was more than fourscore years of age, 
made himself young with the grandchildren ; he 
played with them, he entered into their feelings 
and their fun, he put himself on a level with them. 
When Miss Jeanne had been naughty, and her 
mother deprived her of her dessert after dinner, 
Victor Hugo refused to eat his dessert alone ; and 
as the little girl was naughty for three days, for 
three days the old poet went without the fruit of 
which he was very r fond. 

A French gentleman, Monsieur Richard Les- 
clide, who was Victor Hugo's private secretary 
and thus had a chance to see the tender inti- 
macy of the grandfather and the grandchildren, 
has collected into a book his memories of the poet's 
table-talk ; and in his book he has set down many 
pleasant anecdotes. He records some of the little 
games the poet used to play with his small friends, 
and of the little jests he invented to tease them. 
For instance, in the cherry season, Victor Hugo 
would make a great pretense of dividing a basket of 
the fruit equally between himself and one of his 
grandchildren ; but he had devised a variation of 
the schoolboy joke, called " Heads I win, and Tails 
you lose ! " He began to distribute the cherries, say- 
ing, " One for me, and one for you, and one for me 
again ! " Then he would pause for a moment before 
beginning once more. " One for me, and one for 
vou, and one for me again ! " At first this seemed 
to sound perfectly fair, but as soon as the child saw 
that the poet got two for one, he made a puzzled pro- 
test, to the great delight of his grandfather. 

The stories which Victor Hugo wrote have been 
translated into all the leading languages, and they 



22 



VICTOR HUGOS TALES TO HIS GRANDCHILDREN. 



[November, 



have been read by millions of people ; so it is not 
to be wondered at that so successful a story-teller 
should, have been called upon to tell tales to his 
grandchildren. They often cried aloud for a story, 
and he was always ready to obey. Sometimes, it is 
true, it was inconvenient for him to give up what 
he was doing to amuse a little girl and a little boy ; 
but he never refused their request. If he had really 
no time to give them, he had a little trick by which 
he got them to release him. The poet began to tell 
a story, the hero of which soon felt thirsty, so that 
he went into an inn and ordered a cup of coffee, and 
while it was preparing he took up the newspaper 
and read it. — And when he arrived at this point in 
the narrative, Victor Hugo used to take up the 
newspaper and read it aloud, saying that this was 
just what the man in the story was reading. Now 
the political articles in a Parisian newspaper did 
not at all amuse the poet's grandchildren, and so 
they left the poet alone shortly, and went off to 
some other play; and in time they came to under- 
stand that whenever the hero of a story was thirsty 
and began to read a paper while his coffee was get- 
ting ready, then they might as well at once aban- 
don all hope of going on with the narrative any 
further. 

The tales which Victor Hugo used to tell to his 
grandchildren were not many, but they varied 
greatly in the telling. There were a great many 
possible variations in any one story, which might 
make it either very long or quite short. Of these 
stories M. Lesclide has set down four, which he re- 
membered from having heard the poet tell them 
often. These were, "The Story of the Hermit," 
"The Story of the Ass with Two Ears;" "The 
Story of the Good Flea and the Wicked King," 
and "The Story of the Good Dog." Of these, 
" The Story of the Hermit " is the shortest : and 
it is very short, indeed ; for the poet was never al- 
lowed to finish it. Here it is : 

The Story of the Hermit. 

ONCE upon a time, in a cave under a mountain, 
there was a poor hermit who appeared to live in 
great poverty. He prayed to heaven ; he sub- 
mitted himself to all sorts of mortifications of the 
flesh; and he was the admiration of the people of 
the country, who brought him roots and old crusts 
of bread to keep him from dying of starvation. 
Well, while every one thought him so hungry and 
so wretched, he was eating veal — the pig! 

Here the tale was always interrupted by an 
instant demand for an explanation of this unex- 
pected veal ; and the discussion which arose always 
became so entangled and so protracted that nobody 



ever heard the end of the story ; and we do not 
know now what became of the hermit or why he 
gorged himself on the secret veal. 

A little longer, and yet not altogether com- 
plete, was " The Story of the Ass with Two Ears." 
It was not as great a favorite with the poet's grand- 
children as " The Story of the Good Dog." As 
M. Lesclide says, it begins well, but it does not 
exactly come to an end. However, such as it is, 
here it is : 

The Story of the Ass with Two Ears. 

Once upon a time there was an Ass who was a 
very good ass, but whose life was very agitated. 
This was because of a little difficulty of hearing, with 
which nature had afflicted him. When his right 
ear heard "yes," his left ear heard " no." When 
the right ear heard "turn to the right," the left 
ear heard "turn to the left" — an embarrassing 
situation ! In this case the Ass used to decide not 
to budge — which was in accord with his con- 
templative character. 

In the morning he went as usual to his master 
when he got up, to take his orders for the day, 
waving his ears to show that he was ready to obey. 

"Shall I bear the cabbages to market?" he 
asked with an intelligent look. 

" Yes," heard the right ear. 

" No," heard the left ear. 

The good Ass was much troubled by these 
contradictory injunctions. He supposed that his 
master was undecided as to what ought to be done 
with his cabbages. Then he asked, crying aloud 
like an ass : 

" Shall I instead take the sacks to the mill ?" 

"Yes!" 

"No!" 

" He is still undecided," said the Ass to him- 
self. Braying again, the Ass asked : 

" Shall I instead go and roll in the hay with the 
asses of my acquaintance ? " 

"Yes!" 

"No!" 

"And yet," said the Ass to himself. "I must 
really do something." 

And so he went to roll in the hay. 

One of the tales the children liked best was 
"The Story of the Good Flea and the Wicked 
King." This was a tale which was more elaborate, 
and which lent itself to more action. Whenever 
Victor Hugo proposed to tell this tale, the children 
used to insist that he should do the gestures, and 
he always promised to do the gestures, as they 
wished. This is the tale : 



1886.] 



VICTOR HUGOS TALES TO HIS GRANDCHILDREN. 



23 



The Story of the Good Flea and the 
Wicked King. 

Once upon a time there was a Wicked King who 
made his people very unhappy. " Everybody de- 
tested him. and those whom he had put in prison 
and beheaded would have liked to whip him. 
But how ? He was the strongest; he was the mas- 
ter ; he did not have to give account to any one; 
and when he was told that his subjects were not 
content, he replied: 

"Well, what of it? I don't care a rap!" 
which was an ugly answer. 

As he continued to act like a king, and as lie 
became every day a little more wicked than the 
day before, this set a certain little Flea to thinking 
over the matter. It was a little bit of a Flea who 
was of no consequence at all, but full of good 
sentiments. This is not the nature of fleas in gen- 
eral, but this one had been very well brought up ; 
it bit people with moderation, and only when it 
was very hungry. 

" What if I were to bring the King to reason ? " 
it said to itself. " It is not without danger — but 
no matter ! I will try ! " 

That night the Wicked King, after having done 
all sorts of naughty things during the day, was 
calmly going to sleep, when he felt what seemed 
to be the prick of a pin. 

"Bite!" 

He growled and turned over on the other side. 

"Bite! Bite! Bite!" 

[Here it was that the gestures came in. A sharp 
slap of the hand indicated where the Flea had 
attacked the King, and the story-teller bounded 
about on his chair, the better to express the ago- 
nies of the monarch.] 

"Who is it that bites me so?" cried the King 
in a terrible voice. 

" It is I," replied a little voice. 

" You ? Who are you ? " 

" A little Flea who wishes to correct you ! " 

" A Flea ! Just you wait ! Just you wait, and 
you shall see ! " 

And the King sprang from his bed, twisted his 
coverings and shook the sheets, all of which was 
quite useless, for the Good Flea had hidden itself 
in the royal beard. 

" Ah," said the King, " it has gone now, and I 
shall be able to get a sound sleep." 

But scarcely had he laid his head on the pillow, 
when 

"Bite!" 

"How? What? Again?" 

"Bite! Bite!" 

"You dare to return, you abominable little 
Flea ! But think for a moment what you are 



doing ! You are no bigger than a grain of sand, 
and you dare to bite one of the greatest kings on 
earth ! " 

" Well, what of it? I don't care a rap ! " an- 
swered the Flea in the very words of the King. 

" Ah, if I only had you ! " 

" Yes, but you have n't got me ! " 

The Wicked King did not sleep at all that night, 
and he arose the next morning in a killing ill- 
humor. He resolved to destroy his enemy. By 
his orders, they cleaned the palace from top to 
bottom, and particularly his bedroom; his bed 
was made by ten old women, very skillful in the 
art of catching fleas. But they caught nothing, 
for the Good Flea had hidden itself under the col- 
lar of the King's coat. 

That night, this frightful tyrant, who was dying 
for want of sleep, lay back on both his ears, 
although this is said to be very difficult. But he 
wished to sleep double, and he knew no better 
way. I wish you may find a better. Scarcely had 
lie put out his light when he felt the Flea on 
his neck. 

"Bite! Bite!" 

"Ah, zounds! What is this ? " 

" It is I — the Flea of yesterday." 

" But what do you want, you rascal — you tiny 
pest? " 

" I wish you to obey me, and to make your 
people happy ! " 

" Ho, there, my soldiers, my captain of the 
guard, my ministers, my generals ! Everybody ! 
The whole lot of you ! " 

The whole lot of them came in. The King was 
in a rage which made everybody tremble. He found 
fault with all the servants of the palace. Every- 
body was in consternation. During this time, the 
Flea, quite calm, kept itself hid in the King's 
night-cap. 

The guards were doubled ; laws and decrees 
were made ; ordinances were published against 
all fleas ; there were processions and public pray- 
ers to ask of Heaven the extermination of the Flea, 
and sound sleep for the King. It was all of no 
avail. The wretched King could not lie down, 
even on the grass, without being attacked by his 
obstinate enemy, the Good Flea, who did not let 
him sleep a single minute. 

"Bite! Bite!" 

It would take too long to tell the many hard 
knocks the King gave himself in trying to crush 
the Flea ; he was covered with bruises and contu- 
sions. As he could net sleep, he wandered about 
like an uneasy spirit. He grew thinner. He would 
certainly have died, if, at last, he had not made 
up his mind to obey the Good Flea. 

" I surrender," he said at last, when it began 



24 



VICTOR HUGOS TALES TO HIS GRANDCHILDREN. [November, 




VICTOR HUGO TILLING HIS GRANDCHILDREN TH E STORY OF THE GOOD FLEA AND THE WICKED KING. 



again to bite him. " I ask for quarter. I will do " Thank you. What must I do ? " 

what you wish." " Make your people happy ! " 

'• So much the better. On this condition only " I have never learned how. I do not know 

shall you sleep," replied the Flea. how " 



VICTOR HUGOS TALES TO HIS GRANDCHILDREN 



25 



"Nothing more easy; you have only to go 
away." 

" Taking my treasures with me ? " 

" Without taking anything ! " 

" But I shall die if I have no money ! " said the 
King. 

" Well, what of it ? I don't care ! " replied the 
Flea. 

But the Flea was not hard-hearted, and it let the 
King fill his pockets with money before he went 
away. And the people were able to be very happy 
by setting up a republic. 

Perhaps the greatest favorite of all these new 
" Tales of a Grandfather " was " The Story of the 
Good Dog," which is admirably moral. It inter- 
ested Hugo's grandchildren even more than " The 
Story of the Good Flea and the Wicked King" — 
although there were no gestures to set it off. 
Here it is : 

The Story of the Good Uog. 

ONCE upon a time there was a very Good Dog 
who was called by a name I can not now remem- 
ber. He was a Dog with an excellent disposition. 
I should like to have been his friend. Unfortu- 
nately he was very ugly, dragging one paw, having 
a sore over one eye, and bathing himself rarely. 
This was in part the fault of his master, a little 
Boy, as naughty as possible, who never said a kind 
word to him. He called him "dirty Dog," and 
when no one was looking, for every one is ashamed 
when he is doing wrong, he would give the poor 
beast a great kick, and say : 

"There! Take that ! " 

The Dog cried, " Hee-ee ! hee-ee !" as dogs do 
when they are whipped, and ran away like a thief; 
but in a little while he came back, for he had been 
told to take care of the little Boy. and it was said 
that there were wolves abroad in the land. 

One day a hungry wolf came out of the woods, 
and seeing the little Boy beating the Dog, he 
thought that the Dog would be glad enough to 
get rid of this bad master. The Dog did not 
agree with him at all, and as the wolf absolutely 
insisted on tasting the little Boy, he fought, and 
was badly bitten, but showed himself so brave 
that the wild beast, intimidated by this bold de- 
fense, went back into the forest. The little Boy, 
all trembling, had hidden himself behind a tree, 
and had picked up a big stick to defend himself. 
When he saw the poor Dog come back to him, all 
joyous at his victory, he got very angry : 

" Oh, you wretched beast," he cried, " how you 
frightened me by fighting with that fearful wolf! " 

And so to avenge himself for his fear, he broke 



his stick over the head of the Dog, who ran away, 
whining and badly wounded. 

A few days after, a new adventure happened 
to the poor Dog. His master had stopped on 
the edge of a pond. He had provided himself 
with pebbles, and it was his intention to make 
these jump along the surface of the water, by 
throwing them horizontally. The Dog, after hav- 
ing been rebuffed more than once, — it must be said 
that he was very dirty, indeed, that day, — had sat 
him down and was looking at his master playing. 
All at once — splash! — the little Boy slipped on 
the edge of the pond and fell into the water. 
Splash ! gurgle, gurgle, gurgle ! Splash ! gurgle, 
gurgle, gurgle ! He was swallowing the foul water, 
and he was just on the point of drowning, when 
the Dog, who had instantly plunged into the 
water, gripped the boy by the collar of his jacket 
and bore him back to the shore. But, alas ! the 
Dog had torn the jacket, — just a tiny bit, — and 
the naughty little Boy had lost his cap. This put 
him in a great rage. The Dog jumped into the 
water again to get the cap ; but, taking advantage 
of the stones he had under his hand, the wicked 
Boy began to throw them at him and to force 
him down and to drown him. 

[Here Victor Hugo's grandchildren were never 
able to restrain their indignation. They were 
always so kind to the cats and dogs which they met 
that they could not understand the misdeeds of the 
little boy ; and they felt sure that he would certainly 
be punished for his evil-doing.] 

The Dog at last got himself out of the water 
and took up his miserable life again. But what 
had happened to him was as nothing compared 
with what was going to happen to him. 

The poor beast fell ill. He was scarred and 
mangy ; if you had tried to take him up with the 
tongs, the very tongs would have revolted. His 
half drowning in the pond had given him a terror 
of water which contributed not a little to his un- 
cleanliness. The naughtiness of the little Boy 
seemed to have stained him too. 

It happened that one stormy day, the little Boy, 
followed by his victim, took it into his head to 
climb up into an apple-tree to steal the apples. 
This apple-tree belonged to a fierce peasant, who 
never gave any quarter to robbers, and who would 
have killed a man for a simple pippin. He was 
supposed to be away. The wicked little Boy had 
climbed up into the tree in spite of the barking of 
the Dog, who protested and told him plainly, 
" You are doing wrong ! You are a thief! These 
apples are not yours ! " Instead of listening to him 
the naughty child with all his might threw a green 
apple, as hard as a stone, and it hit the Dog in the 
middle of his forehead, and made an enormous 



26 



THE MAN WHO DROVE DOWNSTAIRS. 



[November, 



bump. But who says that the wicked are not pun- 
ished ? At the moment when this naughty little 
wretch lifted up his head, do you know what he 
saw? The peasant, the terrible peasant, standing 
by the next hedge, his gun in his hand, and shout- 
ing in a terrible voice : 

" Have you any money to pay for my apples ? " 

Alas ! the wretch had not a cent. He felt that he 
was lost ; he thought of the abominable effects of 
the discharge of a gun when it goes into one's 
body, of how he would certainly be killed and 
buried, and, almost wild with terror, he cried : 

" Come to me, my Dog ! " 

Then was seen almost a miracle. You know 
well enough that dogs can not climb trees 

[Here little Jeanne Hugo used to interrupt with 
the breathless remark that "cats can." 

"But there are circumstances -in which all is 
changed," her grandfather would say.] 

This old, dirty Dog jumped, bounded and re- 
bounded like an elastic ball, fastened himself to the 
branches with his teeth, and got in front of his 
horrid master just at the moment when the gun 
went off. 



He received the charge full in the breast. 

His dying eyes turned to the little Boy to beg 
him for help ; but the Boy was already far away. 
He was running across the fields like the thief 
that he was. 

But this is what the peasant saw with his own 
eyes : 

The smoke of the shot, which had enveloped 
the poor beast, seemed to have transfigured it. 
The animal was no longer black, was no longer 
dirty: there was something all around him like the 
glow of an aurora. His dog's hair grew longer 
and more lustrous about his fine head, which took 
on a celestial expression, and great wings grew 
out of his back. 

Here the story came to an end. So great was 
the interest felt in the Dog that neither of the chil- 
dren thought of the little Boy or of the peasant. 
Once, however, Master Georges Hugo happened to 
ask what became of the Good Dog's wicked master. 

"He remained wicked," Victor Hugo answered, 
"and he was cruelly punished for it. Nobody 
loved liim ! " 



THE MAN WHO DROVE DOWNSTAIRS. 

Bv Gekrish Hldridge. 



No DOUBT many of you are familiar with that 
one of Mr. Edward Lear's delightful nonsense 
rhymes, in which he declares that 

There was an old person of Buda, 
Whose conduct grew ruder and ruder; 

Till at last with a hammer 

They silenced his clamor, 
By smashing that person of Buda. 

Well, this same town of Buda seems also to 
have been the home of other eccentric individuals. 
Among these was the celebrated Count Sandor, 
who some years ago owned a splendid palace on 
the rocky height known as the " Schloss-berg," 
or fortress rock, around which the town is built. 

Buda is the capital of Hungary, and is situated 
in the western part of that kingdom, just below 
the point where the Danube, with a great bend, 
turns to the south. The river at Buda is four- 
teen hundred feet wide, and on the opposite bank 
is the larger city of Pesth. The two cities are 
connected with a suspension bridge, as arc New 
York and Brooklyn, and frequent ferry-boats ply 
between. Indeed, the two cities have so many 



interests in common, that they are often spoken of 
as one, under the combined name of Budapest. 

This Count Sandor, of whom I have spoken as 
living in his fine mansion on the Schloss-berg in 
Buda, was very fond of horses, as are all Hunga- 
rians, and he kept in his stables a large number of 
fleet and blooded horses for riding, racing, and 
other purposes. 

The Count Sandor was as daring as he was 
adventurous, and his feats of horsemanship were 
not only eccentric, but dangerous. He would force 
his horses to plunge down from rocky heights, to 
scale almost perpendicular cliffs, to dash across the 
Danube upon floating cakes of ice, to leap over 
streams and chasms, and to clear fences, walls, and 
even moving carriages at a single bound. 

The guests of this harum-scarum count, when 
they accepted his invitation to a ride, needed to 
have their wits about them, for they never knew 
just what to expect of their host and his horses. 
He would think nothing of overturning a carriage 
in some especially dangerous-looking place, just 
for the fun of frightening his companions and 



i8S6.] 



THE MAX WHO DROVE DOWNSTAIRS. 



27 



amusing himself at their expense, and his 
horses were trained to send their riders flying 
over their heads, when off on some pleasantly 
planned horseback excursion — a surprise not 
always acceptable to such of the riders as were 
indifferent horsemen. 

One of his most foolhardy escapades oc- 
curred one day in the year 1827. There was 
in the city of Buda a long and steep stone 
staircase which connected the 
higher section of the town, around <^ipi 
the Schloss-berg, with one of 
the lower sections, known as 
Christian street. This staircase 
was not far from the mansion of the 
Count Sandor, and on that par- 
ticular day the eccentric count had 
for his riding-companion a German artist named 
Johann Prestel, as bold and daring a man as 
was the count. The footman of Count Sandor 
was also in the carriage. 

Suddenly, as they drove past the head of 
the staircase, the count, almost 
without a word, turned his four- 
in-hand toward the steep pas- 
sage-way, and, flicking hislong 
whip above the ears of his lead- 
ers, drove the team headlong 
down the stone staircase. 

How the wheels must have 
bumped and rattled down the £ 
steps ! The count was a very 




28 



HISTORIC GIRLS. 



[November, 



expert driver and could guide his plunging steeds 
with much skill and ease, so thatthis ride downstairs 
was not as fearful or dangerous as it would have 
been with a less skillful driver ; but it was wild 
enough as it was, and even the bold artist found 
the staircase quite long enough for such a down- 
ward dash. 

He made a spirited drawing of this singular 
adventure, which is reproduced in the illustration 
on the preceding page. This, together with a large 



number of other sketches of similar feats of horse- 
manship, was preserved by the count in what 
has for years been known and celebrated among 
horsemen as the " Sandor Album." 

Such a ride as this of Count Sandor's down the 
stone staircase in Buda, was doubtless both daring 
and skillful, but we, I think, would much prefer to 
ride along a level road, and not with so audacious 
and venturesome a driver as was this man who 
drove downstairs. 




On a broad and deep window-seat in the old 
Abbey guest-house at Gloucester, sat two young 
girls of thirteen and ten ; before them, brave- 
looking enough in his old-time costume, stood a 
manly young fellow of sixteen. The three were in 
earnest conversation, all unmindful of the noise 
about them — the romp and riot of a throng of 
young folk, attendants or followers of the knights 



Brooks, 
edith of scotland : the girl of the norman 

ABBEY. 
[Afterward knoimt as tile " Good Queen Maud" of England.'] 

A. D. 1093. 

and barons of King William's court. For William 
Rufus, son of the Conqueror and second Norman 
King of England, held his Whitsuntide gemot, 



or summer council of his lords and lieges, 
the curious old Roman-Saxon-Norman town of 
Gloucester, in the fair vale through which flows the 
noble Severn. The city is known to the young 
folk of to-day as the one in which good Robert 



HISTORIC GIRLS. 



2 9 



Raikcs started the first Sunday-school more than a 
hundred years ago. But the gemot of King Will- 
iam, which was a far different gathering from good 
Mr. Raikes's Sunday-school, was held in the great 
chapter-house of the old Benedictine Abbey, while 
the court was lodged in the Abbey guest-houses, 
in the grim and fortress-like Gloucester Castle, 
and in the houses of the quaint old town itself. 

The boy was shaking his head rather doubtfully 
as he stood, looking down upon the two girls on 
the broad window-seat. 

" Nay, nay, beausire ;* shake not your head like 
that," exclaimed the younger of the girls. " We 
did escape that way, trust me we did ; Edith here 
can tell you I do speak the truth — for, sure, 't was 
her device." 

Thirteen-year-old Edith laughed merrily enough 
at her sister's perplexity, and said gayly as the lad 
turned questioningly to her: 

" Sure, then, beausire, 't is plain to see that you 
are Southron born and know not the complexion of 
a Scottish mist. Yet 't is even as Mary said. For, 
as we have told you, the Maiden's Castle standeth 
high-placed on the crag in Edwin's Burgh, and 
hath many and devious pathways to the lower gate. 
So when the Red Donald's men were swarming up 
the steep, my uncle, the Atheling, did guide us. 
by ways we knew well, and by twists and turnings 
that none knew better, straight through Red Don- 
ald's array, and all unseen and unnoted of them, 
because of the blessed thickness of the gathering 
mist." 

"And this was your device?" asked the boy 
admiringly. 

"Ay, but any one might have devised it, too," 
replied young Edith modestly. " Sure, 't was no 
great device to use a Scotch mist for our safety, 
and 't were wiser to chance it than stay and be 
stupidly murdered by Red Donald's men. And 
so it was, good Robert, even as Mary did say, that 
w-e came forth unharmed from amidst them and 
fled here to King William's court, where we at 
last are safe." 

"Safe, say you; safe?" exclaimed the lad im- 
pulsively. " Ay, as safe as is a mouse's nest in a 
cat's ear — as safe as is a rabbit in a ferret's hutch. 
But that I know you to be a brave and dauntless 
maid, I should say to you " 

But, ere Edith could know what he would say, 
their conference was rudely broken in upon. For 
a royal page, dashing up to the three, with scant 
courtesy, seized the arm of the elder girl, and said 
hurriedly : 

" Haste ye, haste ye, my lady ! Our lord King 
is even now calling for you to come before him in 
the banquet-hall." 

Edith knew too well the rough manners of those 



dangerous days. She freed herself from the grasp 
of the page, and said : 

"Nay, that may I not, master page. 'T is 
neither safe nor seemly for a maid to show her- 
self in baron's hall or in King's banquet-room." 

" Safe or seemly it may not be, but come you 
must, "said the page rudely. " The King demands 
it, and your nay is naught." 

And so, hurried along whether she would or no, 
while her friend, Robert Fitz Godwine, accom- 
panied her as far as he dared, the young Princess 
Edith was speedily brought into the presence of 
the King of England, William II., called, from the 
color of his hair and from his fiery temper, Rufus, 
or "the Red." 

For Edith and Mary were both princesses of Scot- 
land, with a history, even before they had reached 
their teens, as romantic as it was exciting. Their 
mother, an exiled Saxon princess, had, after the 
conquest of Saxon England by the stern Duke 
William the Norman, found refuge in Scotland, 
and had there married King Malcolm Canmore, 
the son of that King Duncan whom Macbeth had 
slain. But when King Malcolm had fallen beneath 
the walls of Alnwick Castle, a victim to English 
treachery, and when his fierce brother Donald 
Bane, or Donald the Red, had usurped the throne 
of Scotland, then the good Queen Margaret died 
in the gray castle on the rock of Edinburgh, and 
the five orphaned children were only saved from 
the vengeance of their bad uncle Donald by the 
shrewd and daring device of the young Princess 
Edith, who bade their good uncle Edgar, the 
Atheling, guide them, under cover of the mist, 
straight through the Red Donald's knights and 
spearmen to England and safety. 

You would naturally suppose that the worst pos- 
sible place for the fugitives to seek safety was in 
Norman England ; for Edgar the Atheling, a Saxon 
prince, had twice been declared King of England by 
the Saxon enemies of the Norman conquerors, and 
the children of King Malcolm and Queen Margaret 
— half Scotch, half Saxon — were, by blood and 
birth, of the two races most hateful to the con- 
querors. But the Red King in his rough sort of 
way — hot to-day and cold to-morrow — had shown 
something almost like friendship for this Saxon 
atheling, or royal prince, who might have been 
King of England had he not wisely submitted to 
the greater power of Duke William the Conqueror 
and to the Red William, his son. More than this, 
it had been rumored that some two years before, 
when there was truce between the Kings of Eng- 
land and of Scotland, this harsh and headstrong 
English King, who was as rough and repelling as a 
chestnut burr, had seen, noticed, and expressed a 



' Fair s 



particular interest in the eleven-year-old Scottish 

an ancient style of address, used especially toward those high in rank in Norman times. 



3° 



HISTORIC GIRLS. 



[November, 



girl — this very Princess Edith who now sought his 
protection. 

So, when this wandering uncle boldly threw 
himself upon Norman courtesy, and came with his 
homeless nephews and nieces straight to the Nor- 
man court for safety, King William Rufus not 
only received these children of his hereditary foe- 
men with favor and royal welcome, but gave them 
comfortable lodgment in quaint old Gloucester 
town, where he held his court. 

But even when the royal fugitives deemed them- 
selves safest were they in the greatest danger. 

Among the attendant knights and nobles of 
King William's court was a Saxon knight known 
as Sir Ordgar, a " thegn," * or baronet, of Oxford- 
shire ; and because those who change their opin- 
ions — political or otherwise — often prove the most 
unrelenting enemies of their former associates, it 
came to pass that Sir Ordgar, the Saxon, conceived 
a strong dislike for these orphaned descendants of 
the Saxon Kings, and convinced himself that the 
best way to secure himself in the good graces of 
the Norman King William was to slander and 
accuse the children of the Saxon Queen Margaret. 

And so that very day, in the great hall, when 
wine was flowing and passions were strong, this 
false knight, raising his glass, bade them all drink 
" Confusion to the enemies of our liege the King, 
from the base Philip of France to the baser Edgar 
the Atheling and his Scottish brats!" 

This was an insult that even the heavy and 
peace-loving nature of Edgar the Atheling could 
not brook. He sprang to his feet and denounced 
the charge : 

"None here is truer or more leal to you, lord 
King," he said, " than am I, Edgar the Atheling, 
and my charges, your guests." 

But King William Rufus was of that changing 
temper that goes with jealousy and suspicion. 
His flushed face grew still more red and, turning 
away from the Saxon prince, he demanded: 

" Why make you this charge, Sir Ordgar?" 

" Because of its truth, beausire," said the faith- 
less knight. " For what other cause hath this false 
Atheling sought sanctuary here, save to use his 
own descent from the ancient kings of this realm 
to make head and force among your lieges? And 
his eldest kinsgirl here, the Princess Edith, hath 
she not been spreading a trumpery story among 
the younger folk, of how some old wyrd-ivif \ 
hath said that she who is the daughter of kings 
shall be the wife and mother of kings ? And 
is it not further true that when her aunt, the Ab- 
bess of Romsey, bade her wear the holy veil, she 
hath again and yet again torn it off, and affirmed 
that she, who was to be a queen, could never be 
made a nun ? Children and fools, 't is said, do 

* Pronounced thane. 



speak the truth, beausire ; and in all this do I see 
the malice and device of this false Atheling, the 
friend of your rebellious brother, Duke Robert, 
as you do know him to be ; and I do brand him 
here, in this presence, as traitor and recreant to 
you, his lord." 

The anger of the jealous King grew more un- 
reasoning as Sir Ordgar went on. 

" Enough ! " he cried. " Seize the traitor, 

or, stay; children and fools, as you have said, Sir 
Ordgar, do indeed speak the truth. Have in the 
girl and let us hear the truth. 'Not seemly?' Sir 
Atheling," he broke out in reply to some protest 
of Edith's uncle. " Aught is seemly that the King 
doth wish. Holo! Raoul ! Damian ! sirrah pages! 
Run, one of you, and seek the Princess Edith, and 
bring her here forthwith ! " 

And while Edgar the Atheling, realizing that 
this was the gravest of all his dangers, strove, 
though without effect, to reason with the angry 
King, Damian, the page, as we have seen, hurried 
after the Princess Edith. 

"How now, mistress!" broke out the Red 
King, as the young girl was ushered into the ban- 
quet-hall, where the disordered tables, strewn with 
fragments of the feast, showed the ungentle man- 
ners of those brutal days. " How now, mistress ! 
do you prate of kings and queens and of your own 
designs — you, who are but a beggar guest? Is it 
seemly or wise to talk, — nay, keep you quiet, Sir 
Atheling; we will have naught from you, — to 
talk of thrones and crowns as if you did even now 
hope to win the realm from me — from me, your 
only protector ? " 

The Princess Edith was a very high-spirited 
maiden, as all the stories of her girlhood show. 
And this unexpected accusation, instead of fright- 
ening her, only served to embolden her. She 
looked the angry monarch full in the face. 

" 'T is a false and lying charge, lord King," she 
said, "from whomsoever it may come. Naught 
have I said but praise of you and your courtesy to 
us motherless folk. 'T is a false and lying charge ; 
and I am ready to stand test of its proving, come 
what may." 

"Even to the judgment of God, girl?" de- 
manded the King. 

And the brave girl made instant reply, "Even 
to the judgment of God, lord King." Then, skilled 
in all the curious customs of those warlike times, 
she drew off her glove. " Whosoever my ac- 
cuser be, lord King," she said, " I do denounce 
him as foresworn and false, and thus do I throw 
myself upon God's good mercy, if it shall please 
him to raise me up a champion." And she flung 
her glove upon the floor of the hall, in face of the 
King and all his barons. 

t Witch-wife, or seercss. 



HISTORIC GIRLS. 



3 1 



It was a bold thing for a girl to do, and a mur- 
mur of applause ran through even that unfriendly 
throng. For, to stand the test of a " wager of 
battle," or the "judgment of God," as the savage 
contest was called, was the last resort of any one 
accused of treason or of crime. It meant no less 
than a " duel to the death " between the accuser 
and the accused or their accepted champions, and, 
upon the result of the duel hung the lives of those 
in dispute. And the Princess Edith's glove lying 
on the floor of the Abbey hall was her assertion 
that she had spoken the truth and was willing to 
risk her life in proof of her innocence. 

Edgar the Atheling, peace-lover though he 
was, would gladly have accepted the post of cham- 
pion for his niece, but, as one also involved 
in the charge of treason, such action was denied 
him. 

For the moment, the Red King's former admi- 
ration for this brave young princess caused him to 
waver; but those were days when suspicion and 
jealousy rose above all nobler traits. His face 
grew stern again. 

" Ordgar of Oxford." he said, "take up the 
glove ! " and Edith knew who was her accuser. 
Then the King asked, "Who standeth as cham- 
pion for Edgar the Atheling and this maid, his 
niece ? " 

And almost before the words were spoken young 
Robert Fitz Godwine stood by Edith's side. 

"That would I, lord King, if a young squire 
might appear against a belted knight !" 

" Ordgar of Oxford fights not with boys ! " 
said the accuser contemptuously. 

The King's savage humor broke out again. 

" Face him with your own page, Sir Ordgar," 
he said, with a grim laugh. " Boy against boy 
would be a fitting wager for a young maid's life." 

But the Saxon knight was in no mood for 
sport. 

"Nay, bcausire ; this is no child's play," he 
said. " I care naught for this girl. I stand as 
champion for the King against yon traitor Athe- 
ling ; and if the maiden's cause is his, why then 
against her too. This is a man's quarrel." 

Young Robert would have spoken yet again as 
his face flushed hot with anger at the knight's 
contemptuous words. But a firm hand was laid 
upon his shoulder, and a strong voice said : 

"Then is it mine, Sir Ordgar. If between 
man and man, then will I, with the gracious per- 
mission of our lord the King, stand as champion 
for this maiden here and for my good lord, the 
noble Atheling, whose liegeman and whose man 
am I, next to you, lord King." And, taking the 
mate to the glove which the Princess Edith had 
flung down in defiance, he thrust it into the guard 



of his cappelline, or iron skull-cap, in token that 
he, Godwine of Winchester, the father of the boy 
Robert, was the young girl's champion. 

Three d.iys after, in the tilt-yard of Gloucester 
Castle, the wager of battle was fought. It was no 
gay tournament show with streaming banners, 
gorgeous lists, gayly dressed ladies, flower-decked 
balconies, and all the splendid display of a tourney 
of the knights, of which you read in the stories 
of romance and chivalry. It was a solemn and 
somber gathering in which all the arrangements 
suggested only death and gloom, while the accused 
waited in suspense, knowing that halter and fagot 
were prepared for them should their champion 
fall. In quaint and crabbed Latin the old chroni- 
cler, John of Fordun, tells the story of the fight, 
for which there is neither need nor space here. 
The glove of each contestant was flung into the 
lists by the judge, and the dispute committed for 
settlement to the power of God and their own good 
swords. It is a stirring picture of those days ot 
daring and of might, when force took the place of 
justice, and the deadliest blows were the only con- 
vincing arguments. But, though supported by the 
favor of the King and the display of splendid armor, 
Ordgar's treachery had its just reward. Virtue 
triumphed, and vice was punished. Even while 
treacherously endeavoring (after being once dis- 
armed) to stab the brave Godwine with a knife 
which he had concealed in his boot, the false Sir 
Ordgar was overcome, confessed the falsehood of 
his charge against Edgar the Atheling and Edith 
his niece, and, as the quaint old record has it, 
" The strength of his grief and the multitude of 
his wounds drove out his impious soul." 

So young Edith was saved; and, as is usually 
the case with men of his character, the Red King's 
humor changed completely. The victorious God- 
wine received the arms and lands of the dead 
Ordgar ; Edgar the Atheling was raised high in 
trust and honor; the throne of Scotland, wrested 
from the Red Donald, was placed once more in 
the family of King Malcolm, and King William 
Rufus himself became the guardian and protec- 
tor of the Princess Edith. 

And when, one fatal August day, the Red King 
was found pierced by an arrow under the trees of 
the New Forest, his younger brother, Duke Henry, 
whom men called Beauclerc, " the good scholar," 
for his love of learning and of books, ascended the 
throne of England as King Henry I. And the 
very vear of his accession, on the 1 ith of Novem- 
ber, 1 100, he married, in the Abbey of Westmin- 
ster, the Princess Edith of Scotland, then a fair 
young lady of scarce twenty-one. At the request 
of her husband she took, upon her coronation 
day, the Norman name of Matilda, or Maud, and 



32 



HISTORIC GIRLS. 



[November, 



by this name she is known in history and among 
the Queens of England. 

So, scarce four and thirty years after the Norman 
conquest, a Saxon princess sat upon the throne 
of Norman England, the loving wife of the son of 
the very man by whom Saxon England was con- 
quered. 

"Never, since the battle of Hastings," says Sir 
Francis Palgrave, the historian, "had there been 
such a joyous day as when Queen Maud was 



this young queen labored to bring in kindlier man- 
ners and more gentle ways. Beautiful in face, 
she was still more lovely in heart and life. Her 
influence upon her husband, Henry the scholar, 
was seen in the wise laws he made, and the 
"Charter of King Henry" is said to have been 
gained by her intercession. This important paper 
was the first step toward popular liberty. It led 
the way to Magna Charta, and finally to our own 
Declaration of Independence. The boys and girls 




T IS A FALSE CHARGE, LORD KING ! SAID EDITH. 



crowned." Victors and vanquished, Normans and 
Saxons, were united at last, and the name of 
" Good Queen Maud " was long an honored 
memory among the people of England. 

And she was a good queen. In a time of bitter 
tyranny, when the common people were but the 
serfs and slaves of the haughty and cruel barons, 



of America, therefore, in common with those of 
England, can look back with interest and affec- 
tion upon the romantic story of "Good Queen 
Maud," the brave-hearted girl who showed her- 
self wise and fearless both in the perilous mist at 
Edinburgh, and, later still, in the yet greater 
dangers of " the black lists of Gloucester." 



JUAN A XD ]\J A N I T A . 



33 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 
By Frances C. Baylor. 

[This story of two unfortunate fortunates — mice, let us say, seized by a tiger and escaping from under his 
very paws — is founded upon an actual experience. It is affectionately dedicated to all children everywhere by 
the Author. ] 



Chapter I. 

ABOUT ten years ago, there was not a happier 
family in all Mexico than one living near the 
village of Santa Rosa, province of Coahuila, and 
consisting of a ranchero, his wife Anita, and their 
two children, Juan and Juanita. 

They had a great deal to be grateful for and 
to enjoy ; a comfortable home, large flocks and 
herds, — which constitute the wealth of that coun- 
try, — health, work, and, best of all, a tender love 
for one another. They had a great deal of another 
thing, some of which they could very well have 
spared — name. 

The father called himself Don Jose MariaCruz de 
las Santas,* prided himself upon his pure Castilian 
lineage, and was never tired talking of his " sangrc 
azitl," or "blue blood," and his superiority to 
ordinary Mexicans. 

His wife had no aristocratic pretensions whatever, 
and, instead of always talking about the past, was 
content to do her duty in the present. She was a 
simple and rather ignorant woman, but so well did 
she apply herself to her home duties, that never 
had any man a truer, better wife, children a more 
passionately devoted, self-sacrificing mother, nor 
house a more capable mistress than the Sehora 
Anita. If she had a fault, it was that she was alto- 
gether too unselfish, and she would willingly have 
worked herself to death for those she loved. 

And there was enough to do; for, although Don 
Jose was reckoned a rich man, he lived as simply 
in most respects as his poorer neighbors, and never 
seemed to think of spending his money on serv- 
ants, carriages, fine clothes, and the like luxuries. 
Fortunately he was not too fine a gentleman to 
work, in spite of his excessive vanity about the 
Cruz de las Santas, whose renown he honestly 
thought filled the world. On the contrary, he 
diligently herded his own sheep, sheared them in 
season, branded his cattle, trained his horses, and 
did other outdoor work, and he naturally ex- 
pected the Senora Anita to be equally industri- 
ous. Nor was he disappointed ; for when she 

* Pronounced in English : Hosay Mareea Croos 

Vol. XIV.— v 



was not making tomales, or tortil!as,\ she was 
sprinkling and sweeping the floors and court- 
yard, or bringing in great earthen jars of water, 
or spreading out the family linen to bleach in the 
sun, or training the rebellious tendrils of the grape- 
vine that covered one side of the house and sup- 
plied them with immense bunches of delicious Paras 
grapes at one season of the year — in short, doing 
something for the good of the household. 

And no matter where she went, she was always 
followed by Juan and Juanita, who trotted after 
her from morning until night, yet always felt 
themselves welcome and no more in the way than 
did the chickens they saw under this or that hen's 
wing when they went out to feed the poultry that 
swarmed about the place. Ifhis mother seized Juan 
when he ran up to her with the crown of his broad 
sombrero heaped full of eggs, it was to draw him 
to her side and stroke his hair and praise him for 
having found them. Or. if Juanita tumbled into 
the brook near which the Sehora was washing in 
laborious Mexican fashion, the garment, whatever 
it was, was dropped, and soon the dripping little 
figure was being pressed against her loving heart, 
while the tenderest articulate and inarticulate cries 
of sympathy and affection were poured out on 
the unfortunate, and so much love shone in the 
mother's soft, brown eyes that it was worth any 
child's while to get a wetting in order to see it 
there and hear the caressing, " Mi alma .' Mi 
vida .'" (" My soul ! My life ! ") that came so music- 
ally from the Senora's lips. 

Busy as she was, the Senora found time to 
do a great deal of " mothering," and her children 
lived always in the sunshine, indoors and out, as 
joyous and volatile as the butterflies they chased, 
as brown as the berries they sought, forever leap- 
ing and dancing like the brook in which they were 
forever wading, the happiest of created things. 
They did not deserve much credit for being happy, 
for, except in the golden age of the world, there 
were never two children who had more to in- 
terest and amuse them, and less to vex them. 
Their few tasks came properly under the head of 
pleasures; they had no lessons to learn, only a 

day las Santas. t Mexican dishes. 



34 



JUAN AND I U A X I T A . 



[November, 



few simple rules to obey ; no fine clothes to soil 
or spoil ; and as for playfellows, they had each 
other, the pigeons, chickens, lambs, ducks, pup- 
pies, and other young things about the place, not 
to mention the birds, frogs, squirrels, and one espe- 
cially sagacious and long-suffering shepherd-dog, 
Amigo, their most faithful friend and constant 
companion. They were so happy and so busy that 
it did not often occur to them to be naughty ; but 
if they did get into trouble, it was always Don Jose 



smooth and hard. The ceiling was festooned with 
long strings of jerked beef, and onions, and red 
peppers — the latter a prominent ingredient in 
everything the Senora cooked, and so much rel- 
ished by Don Jose that it was his habit to pull 
off a handful at odd times and eat them as we 
would grapes or figs, although they would certainly 
have choked any one who was unaccustomed to 
the luxury. 

Perhaps, amonghis other distinguished peculiar- 



f 





'iwm 




A MEXICAN HACIENDA. 



who punished them and the Senora who made them 
sorry for what they had done. As soon as she dared 
do so, she would go to them, take them in her arms, 
murmur softly, "Poire desgraciado ! " (" Poor dis- 
graced one ! ") or "Niila mia .' " (" My little girl ! ") 
pour balm into all their wounds, take all the sting 
and the bitterness out of their sore hearts, and so 
lead them out, chastened and mild, to kneel at 
their father's feet and beg forgiveness; and then 
she sent them out to play, and smiled as she 
heard their shouts and laughter. 

Their home, or hacienda, was not in the least 
like any house that you have ever seen, most likely. 
It was roughly but strongly built of stout pickets 
driven firmly into the earth near enough together 
to allow the space between to be daubed with clay 
and thatched with ////(', a long reed that grows in 
Mexican country wherever there is standing water. 
Inside there were no carpets, curtains, mirrors, 
pictures, or books, and only a little furniture of 
the simplest kind; but, though homely, it was 
home-like, which is not always the case with 
finer houses. The floor was only the earth in- 
closed, but much tramping and the Sefiora ! s end- 
less sweepings and scourings had made it quite 



ities, the Maria Cruz de las Santas had been made 
fireproof, and so could indulge in dainties that 
would have proved fatal to ordinary people ; per- 
haps Don Jose had earned his insensibility to 
burning liquids and vegetables by a long course of 
Spartan banquets, and would himself have been 
blown up early in his career by one of the dozen 
peppers with which he now seasoned every meal. 
However that may be, it really seemed as though 
he could swallow molten lead without winking. A 
spoonful of those tiny live-coals called chillis dis- 
appeared down his throat without bringing the 
least additional tinge of color into his sallow cheek 
or the suspicion of tears to his eyes ; he always 
took his coffee boiling ; and as for the catsups and 
sauces that we call hot and serve with soup or 
fish, it is my belief that he would have mistaken 
them for ice if they had come in his way. 

Everything within the hacienda was kept in a 
tidy state by the Senora, the few cooking-utensils 
bright and clean, the family effects disposed in 
an orderly fashion about the room, the walls of 
which were whitewashed regularly twice a year. 
So good a housewife was sure to have some place 
to store precious things, and accordingly in one 



I836.J 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 



60 



corner there were some rude shelves where small 
packages of coffee and sugar, dried fruit, and 
what not were kept ; and it was a spot that inter- 
ested Juan and his sister more than any other, for 
here were always to be seen one or more tall pyra- 
mids of a confection called pcloncillos* wrapped 
in golden straw. How their eyes did glisten, to 
be sure, and their mouths water when the Seiiora 
got one down, slowly unpacked it, and then broke 
off a piece and divided it between them ! This 
was almost sure to happen on Sundays, the days 
of their saints, the fiestas of the Annunciation and 
Assumption and all the great festivals, on San 
Miguel's day, San Antonio's day, and whenever 
they were supposed to deserve the treat. There 
was nothing they liked better, not even loaves 
of the fine Mexican bread known as /«;( de gloria, 
which they enjoyed equally in the baking and the 
eating. It was a blissful performance to watch 
the Sehora get out her materials, deftly fashion 
each little cake in turn, make the sign of the cross 
on it, and pop it into the oven : it was still more 
delightful to see them taken out, so hot, brown, 
delicious ! and to be given as many as two hands 
could hold, and to run off to the garden with 
them ! So good a woman as the Sefiora could 
hardly be lacking in piety : every morning and 
evening she was wont to kneel in humble, fervent 
prayer, with little Juan on one side and Juanita on 
the other repeating after her their paternosters. 
And if the children were not made to study his- 
tory and geography and arithmetic, like most 
young Americans, they at least had before them 
constantly the example of their sweet mother, 
and so got by heart, in the best way possible, the 
first and greatest of all lessons — love to God and 
man. 

Near the house on one side was the corral, or 
pen, for the sheep, with the shepherd-dogs guard- 
ing it like so many trusty sentinels. On the 
other was the Sefiora's garden, where she had 
lovely flowers growing or blooming always, great 
bushes studded with oleander blossoms, clamber- 
ing vines of jessamine or morning-glory, cacti, 
aloes, and dwarf palms. Some of the children's 
most delightful hours were passed in this sunny, 
fragrant spot, rolling about on the ground with 
Amigo, caressing their mother's tiny Chihuahua 
dogs Chula and I J reciosa, making wreaths to fling 
about their necks, or playing hide-and-seek be- 
hind the oleanders, while the Sefiora industriously 
clipped, watered, shaded, or smoked the plants, 
planted or gathered seeds, or daily plucked im- 
mense bouquets which a prodigal nature daily re- 
placed. Her work done, she would often sit down 
on the steps of a rickety porch attached to that end 
of the house where shade and a breeze were nearly 

* Pronounced pay-lone-cilyos 



always to be found ; the children and the little dogs 
would swarm somehow into her lap ; and there she 
would fondle and caress them all with that wealth 
of soft labials which the Spanish language pos- 
sesses, or sing in a high, sweet, but, it must be 
confessed, very nasal, voice song after song ; and 
in some of them, "£l Siteno," " Maiianitas Alle- 
gras," "Si go te aino" f the children would join. 

And now I come to the one cloud in the beauti- 
ful blue of that heaven on earth — a cloud that 
sometimes appeared a mere speck for months to- 
gether and so far away that it was almost lost 
sight of, and then suddenly grew black and ter- 
rible and threatened to overspread the whole sky 
and work the most dreadful ruin and desolation. 
It needed but a look at the hacienda to tell the 
whole story, for all along its walls at regular inter- 
vals were holes through which to fire upon an at- 
tacking party, and the house and outlying buildings 
were inclosed in a picket-fence, with gaps here and 
there, intended to serve the same good end. The 
haunting terror, the curse of the country, was that 
it was liable to be overrun at any time by the In- 
dians, who would sweep down upon it from their 
distant strongholds in the mountains, steal all the 
cattle and sheep they could find, and murder the 
peaceful inhabitants, men, women, and children, 
or else carry them off into a captivity so horrible 
that it was dreaded more than death. The Mexi- 
cans, when they had any warning of the approach 
of the savages, would hastily drive their flocks and 
herds into the corrals, the poorer neighbors seek- 
ing shelter and protection from the richer; but it 
often happened that they were taken completely 
by surprise, and then terrible scenes ensued. 
Every hacienda was for the time converted into a 
fortress, always well provisioned in expectation 
of these forays, and so well defended, that the 
Indians, who were not prepared to lay regular 
siege to it with artillery, scaling-ladders, battering- 
rams, or any of the appliances of civilized warfare, 
and who could not wait to starve the garrison out, 
were generally repulsed after a few fierce assaults. 

At the time of which I write, there had been 
no Indian raids for fully eighteen months, and a 
feeling of perfect security had gradually grown up. 
The flocks were growing larger and larger, and 
were every day driven farther and farther from 
the jacals% and haciendas in search of fresh past- 
ture. Don Jose heard in Santa Rosa that all the 
Indians had been chased out of Mexico never to 
return, and he spread the good news far and wide. 
Even the timid Sefiora Anita breathed freely at 
last; she no longer made herself unhappy when her 
children (as children will) strayed out into the 
surrounding country and did not come back until 
late, and she even formed the habit of sending 



t "The Dream," " Happy mornings," " If I love thee." t Sheep-huts ; pronounced hah-cals. 



3° 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 



[November, 



them every day to carry their father's dinner to 
him wherever he might be. It was a great weight 
lifted from her mind and heart, and never had she 
been busier or happier. It was true that they 
sometimes heard vaguely of Indian depredations 
in Texas, but that was not Mexico ; and was not 
everybody quite sure that all danger was over? 

But one bright, beautiful summer day, when all 
the world looked so lovely that there seemed to be 
no room for trouble or sorrow in it, a terrible thing 
happened that overwhelmed not only the Las San- 
tas family, but many another, in grief unutterable. 

It came in this way. The day opened with a 
gorgeous sunrise with splendid tints of rose and 
gold which the Senora lingered to admire as she 
walked back to the house from the well in the fresh 
coolness of the early morning, carrying on her head 
a huge oya,* so nicely poised that not a drop of its 
contents brimmed over. As much could not be said 
for Juan and Juanita, who with smaller jugs tried 
to imitate her example, for, instead of following 
their mother and making at least an attempt to 
achieve the same graceful, erect, smooth way of 
gliding over the ground, they ran on ahead and 
kept turning and twisting their heads and looking 
back at her, which caused small streams of water 
to pour down their backs or laughing faces, while 
the Senora made a mild pretense of scolding them, 
and really rejoiced in their beauty, health, and 
happiness. The sun itself, now fully revealed, 
was not as cheerful a sight to her as her two 
merry, lovely children, and she watched all their 
movements with fondest pride and delight. Break- 
fast over, the gate of the courtyard was thrown 
open, and through it the long procession of lowing, 
hooking, trampling cattle pushed themselves and 
one another out into the open, followed by an im- 
mense flock of sheep and goats trotting meekly, 
bleating pitifully, running awkwardly to right or 
left in timorous battalions as the herders cut at 
them with their long whips, or as Don Jose's vicious 
little mustang bolted in among them and, feeling 
a pair of enormous rowels driven into its sensitive 
sides, bolted out again. The gates were then shut 
again and made fast, and those who were left be- 
hind at the hacienda settled down to the usual 
peaceful and monotonously regular duties of the 
day. 

The Senora first made some preserves and then 
betook herself to a favorite employment, the man- 
ufacture of the beautiful Mexican blankets, which 
is one of the great industries of the countrx . She 
had many difficulties to contend with in mak- 
ing them. Her only loom was a row of wooden 
pegs driven in the walls, her spinning-wheel was 



almost as primitive, the wool from her sheep of 
but an indifferent quality ; but such was her energy 
and womanly skill that she somehow contrived to 
clean, card, spin and dye very beautiful yarns, 
brilliant of hue, unfading, and of many shades. 
Of these she made, from designs of her own, hand- 
some, durable, waterproof blankets, that, in spite 
of all the local competition, fetched a third more 
than any others in the market of Santa Rosa when 
she chose to sell them, which was not often. On 
that particular morning she finished putting in the 
warp and woof of a serapa f for Don Jose, and, hav- 
ing filled her large shuttle with yarn, went hope- 
fully to work upon the border as though it was to 
be the work of a day, instead of a year, thrust- 
ing the shuttle patiently in and out, in and out, 
between the threads with her slender, supple, 
brown fingers, and singing " Mananitas Allegros" 
more through her nose than ever. 

When she saw by her clock (the broad band of 
sunshine streaming in at the door) that it was 
high noon, she put by her weaving, got dinner, 
and, while the children were eating, put up Don 
Jose's midday repast in a rush basket and filled a 
gourd with fresh water. She presently dispatched 
Juan and Juanita with these, following them to the 
door, and giving each a fond embrace as well as 
maternal counsels and cautions. She stood there 
watching them as they trotted briskly across the 
sun-baked courtyard, carrying the basket between 
them. Amigo, who had been taking life comfort- 
ably in the shade on the other side of the ha- 
cienda, dashed after them at the last moment. 
The Senora got a last glimpse of the children's 
laughing faces as they successively stooped and 
patted Amigo. looked back at her, and called out, 
' 'Adios, Mamacita .' " ( " Good-bye, little mother !") 

" Adios, niiios adorados ! " ("Good-bye, dar- 
lings !"t) she replied affectionately, and kissed 
her hand to them. 

The gates closed on the outgoing trio. 

The Senora went back to her dinner and then 
settled down to her work, well content to have some 
hours of uninterrupted labor to give to the serapa, 
which she intended should be the handsomest she 
had ever made — a birthday gift for her husband. 

The children walked away westward across the 
sunburnt, rock-bound plain toward the place 
where they knew they should find their father and 
the flock. Whenever the basket got too heavy for 
them, they stopped ; and they were by no means 
in such haste as to feel debarred from enjoying 
themselves. They picked many flowers on their 
leisurely way ; they spent almost three-quarters of 
an hour in watching and thwarting the innumerable 



r Earths 



t A blanket having in the tenter a hole through which the wearer slips his head. The serapa is worn by the 
Mexicans when they go abroad. * Literally, " Good-bye, adored children ! " 



6.] 



J U A N AND J U A N I T A . 



37 



companies of large red ants that were marching in 
long files across the country ; and they applied them- 
selves seriously to the work of thrusting their fingers 
into the large fissures made in the prairie by many 
parching months of excessive heat, and hollowing 
out a trench into which Amigo's tail could be neat- 
ly fitted and then covered with earth. This was a per- 
formance of which they never tired; and when he 
had stood enough of these attempts to raise him in 



saved them from a good scolding. Their father's 
vexation, like his appetite, was soon appeased, 
however. Juanita was soon allowed to light his 
pipe and to sit down in his lap, and Juan fell to 
playing with the cord of his father's immense som- 
brero, braided and coiled about the brim in imi- 
tation of a snake with its tail in its mouth, and 
then tried the hat on, saying proudly, " It is not 
much too big for me, is it, Padre mio?" although 




"don josh's vicious little mustang bolted IN' among them." 



the scale of animals by depriving him of his caudal 
appendage, he would get up suddenly, shake him- 
self violently, as likely as not sending a small 
cloud of dust into their eyes, and stalk away good- 
humoredly, his only rebuke the dignified one of 
refusing to come back when called. It was not 
until Amigo had made this stand that the children 
realized how late it was growing, and when at last 
they came to the edge of the little thicket of mes- 
quite trees, where Don Jose had sought refuge from 
the noonday glare, not all their voluble excuses 



it continually slipped down over his black curls 
and laughing eyes. Once, when this happened, 
Amigo growled and rose up and began to nose 
about uneasily, but lay down again when re- 
proved by Don Jose, who said "That stupid dog 
does n't know you.'' 

The day was still and sultry, and it seemed as 
though all the world was holding its breath. The 
scanty foliage of the mesquite shrubs was motionless 
overhead. Nothing was to be seen but the sunlit 
plain before them stretching away to a semicircle 



33 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 



[November, 



of low distant hills, a beautiful little lake close by 
reflecting the flood of light which poured down 
upon it, a few buzzards soaring with the most ex- 
quisite grace and repose high in the blue inten- 
sity and immensity of the Mexican sky. There was 
nothing to be heard but an occasional bleat from 
the flock brought to shade and water near the 
lake. A more perfectly tranquil, peaceful scene 
could not be imagined. Don Jose, having smoked, 
bethought himself of his usual midday siesta, and 
sent the children away ; and nothing loath, they ran 
off to play under the trees with the kids and lambs, 
and to feed the shepherd-dogs. This took some 
time, during which Don Jose slept profoundly, 
having laid aside his pistols and the heavy belt in 
which his knife was stuck, and propped his gun 
against a tree. For, although he had grown care- 
less, as people who live in perilous times and 
places are apt to do whenever there seems no 
immediate danger of losing life or property, he 
never dreamed of leaving the hacienda without 
being well armed. Long immunity from Indian 
raids had effaced the anxiety he had sometimes 
felt about the safety of his wife and children, and 
for himself he had no fear ; but, if only from sheer 
force of habit, he would no more have thought of 
leaving off his knife or pistols than his boots when 
he dressed himself in the morning. When the 
children returned they found their father awake, 
refreshed, good-humored, and disposed to caress 
his little daughter, who perched again on his lap 
while he stroked her hair and admired its texture 
and abundance, her large dark eyes which looked 
up at him, and, above all, her fair skin, proof of 
the Castilian blood of which he was so proud. 

"You are now six years old, are you not, Juan- 
ita mia ? " he said. 

" Yes, Father mine. And Juan is eight," she 
replied. 

"In a year, so, like this," said Don Jose, meas- 
uring with his hand a certain distance from the 
ground; " in another, so — and so — and so — and 
so — and so," the hand rising every time. 

He went on talking of the days to come when 
she should be big enough for this and that, and 
succeed one by one to the occupations and digni- 
ties of Mexican womanhood, while the children 
listened and laughed. But he was interrupted. 
The shepherd-dogs began barking furiously, and 
rushed into the chaparral.* Don Jose sprang to 
his feet, armed himself, and seized his gun, think- 
ing that wolves or the Mexican lion or leopard 
were attacking the flocks. The children nestled 
close to him, and he looked hesitatingly at them, 
reluctant to leave them. At that moment the 
sound of horses' feet and wild yells came to them 

* Thick and 



from the direction of the lake — and they knew 
that the Comanches were upon them ! It was a 
frightful moment, and the children were paralyzed 
by terror: But Don Jose, being an old woods- 
man, did not lose his presence of mind for one 
moment, though he turned pale under the shock. 
"Run! run to the chaparral! hide! fly!" he 
called out to the children in a voice of agonized 
earnestness ; and, as they obeyed, he too ran, but 
toward the Indians, to divert their attention from 
Juan and Juanita. 

He had not gone far when a loud scream from 
Juanita told him that his ruse had failed, and, 
turning, he rushed back again, to see that three 
Indians had come in from that side, where they 
had probably for some time been concealed and 
watching him. 

They were so intent upon catching the chil- 
dren that they did not notice the return of the 
father until he fired on one of them and shot him 
through the heart. Don Jose then drew his pistol 
and began an attack on the other two, who were 
glad to take shelter behind trees from his well- 
directed fire. Taking advantage of their defeat, 
he seized a child by each hand and tried to gain 
the shelter of a dense thicket near by. But his 
success was only momentary, for fifteen or twenty 
Indians burst into the open ground and opened 
fire upon him. He soon fell mortally wounded, 
but still cried out. "Run! run!" with all the 
energy of his soul. 

Disobeying him for the first time in her life, 
Juanita would not leave him, but dropped down 
by him, threw her arms around his neck, and, hid- 
ing her face on his bosom, shrieked out her grief 
and terror ; while poor Juan, who could not bear 
to leave either of them, added his cries to hers. 

The Indians closed in around the little group, 
and now began one of those terrible scenes too 
common in both Mexico and Texas. At last even 
their hideous revenge was complete, and Juanita 
felt herself seized by the hair from the rear, and 
sank on her knees with a shriek of despair. The 
mother of the brave whom Don Jose had slain 
had determined to take what vengeance she could 
for his death, and began raining cruel blows on 
the trembling child at her feet. But this fresh 
calamity, instead of further subduing Juan's spirit, 
seemed to have the effect of arousing him from 
a horrible dream. The squaw's attack upon the 
little sister he loved so transported him with fury 
that, lost to every consideration of prudence or 
personal fear, he tore off a hard, dry mesquite 
limb from the nearest tree, and dealt the old 
Indian woman a series of blows on the head that 
came so fast and furious that she was forced to let 

brambly underbrush. 



U A N A X D I U A N I T A . 



39 



Juanita go and give her whole attention to her 
enraged assailant. 

She was a woman much above the ordinary 
stature, and with her painted face, black, snaky 
locks, and glittering eyes, she might have 
appalled an older and bolder enemy ; but Juan 




" ' RUN ! RUN TO THE CHAPARRAL ! HIDE ! FLY ! ' > 

was beside himself with rage, and his very size 
gave him an advantage, for he slipped from her 
grasp over and over again, dodged here and there, 
struck at her when she least expected it, and 
darted about her very much as a hornet might 
have done. The odds were so great, though, that 
the battle must have gone against Juan had he 



not been suddenly reenforced by Amigo, who, 
with a savage growl, leaped against the squaw with 
all his sharp teeth showing. Utterly infuriated, 
she drew her knife and made a fierce lunge at Juan, 
who swerved swiftly to the right, and replied with 
a blow that nearly stunned her. The Indians yelled 
their approval of his cour- 
age, and just as she was 
about to spring upon him 
again like a tigress, one 
of the chiefs coming up, 
seized and held her firmly 
for a moment, shook her 
in reply to some fierce 
words that she muttered 
in her rage, and then 
pushed her down on the 
ground, where she lay 
panting and glaring at 
Juan. 

The chief now announ- 
ced that he should take 
the children as his prizes, 
and forbade their being 
further injured, saying 
that Juan would make a 
bravo soldado (brave sol- 
dier), and should be re- 
ceived into their tribe, 
where he would take the 
place of the warrior they 
had lost. Don Jose's flock 
was then hastily gathered, 
and the Indians prepared 
to fly with their booty be- 
fore the Mexicans could 
rally and pursue them. 
The children were taken 
up behind two Indians, 
and the whole party push- 
ed rapidly across the plain 
to the hills, where they 
took the trail and began 
winding up the side of the 
mountain. Arrived at a 
certain high point, they 
halted and were joined 
by some Indians stationed 
there to look out for 
pursuers. 

The spot commanded a beautiful view of the 
valley spread out at their feet, which was made 
more impressive by being enveloped in great part 
by the peculiar gloom of a fast-approaching storm, 
across which the late afternoon sun sent long, 
melancholy shafts of amber light as it reluctantly 
withdrew from a vain struggle with the powers of 



CALLED DON" JOSE. ' 



40 



TALKING IN THEIR SLEEP. 



[November, 



darkness. But there was no one to enjoy the 
scene. 

The Indians exchanged a feu- words and nods 
and grunts, and then drove their heels into the 
flanks of their horses, impatient to get a night's 
start of possible avenging rancheros. The chil- 
dren, alarmed by the way the mustangs slipped 
about on the stony hillside, clung desperately to 
the Indians in front of them, speechless with fright 
and misery and exhaustion. 

As they were about to move on again, Juanita 
looked down, and there, far below her in the dis- 
tance, dimly seen in the waning light, was the 
hacienda. Her impulse was to throw herself from 

(To A 



the horse as the first step toward reaching it, and 
she made some such movement, but was jerked 
back into place by her old enemy, the squaw. Her 
poor little heart was bursting with anguish. Hold- 
ing out her arms toward the hacienda she broke 
into passionate sobs and a piteous cry, " Mi 
madre .' Mi niadre .' " ( 1; my Mother! my 
Mother ! ") 

The old squaw half turned and struck her. 

The very clouds overhead could not stand the 
sight of so much wretchedness, and let fall a great 
shower of pitying tears, shutting out the last ray 
of sunlight from the world, and of hope from the 
hearts of two captive and despairing children. 
'.otitimted. ) 



TALKING IX THEIR SLEEP. 

By Edith M. Thomas. 

" You think I am dead," 

The apple-tree said, 
" Because I have never a leaf to show — 

Because I stoop. 

And my branches droop, 
And the dull gray mosses over me grow ! 
But I 'm all alive in trunk and shoot; 

The buds of next May 

I fold away — 
But I pit\ the withered grass at my root." 

•" You think 1 am dead," 

The quick grass said, 
•' Because I have parted with stem and blade ! 

But under the ground 

I am safe and sound 
With the snow's thick blanket over me laid. 
1 'm all alive, and ready to shoot. 

Should the Spring of the Year 

Come dancing here — 
But I pity the flower without branch or root." 



" You think I am dead," 

A soft voice said, 
" Because not a branch or root I own ! 

I never have died. 

But close I hide 
In a plumy seed that the wind has sown. 
Patient I wait through the long winter hours : 

You will see me again — 

I shall laugh at you, then, 
Out of the eves of a hundred flowers ! " 



HIDE AND SEEK. 



41 



In And out",. 

and roundalouf, 

anfiorue 








« 



*n<3 5^^ 



A e | i) curled ubon lJ?e $eat ; 
5<>f tly /\af draw; near . 
/^Ji .' he 5 ties ner little feet, 
jlte 15 <iv§*t I fear ! 




KeaJy ' reajly 
fnen /^&f crieJ 

(Ok 1 tL 

5Iy yountf 

•V f) 




(:•.% furn'd 
fciole 

tax' 



42 



BORING FOR OIL. 



[November, 



BORING FOR OIL. 



By Samuel W. Hall. 




F you will take a map 
of Pennsylvania, and 
draw a heavy line 
from Washington 
Washington county 
(down in the south- 
western corner of the 
State, near smoky 
Pittsburg), to Brad- 
ford, McKean county 
(in the northern part 
of the State), you 
will have _ marked 
the general location 
and direction of the 
great oil and natural-gas regions of the State, as 
they are at present known. 

Along this line — and perhaps more to the left, 
or north and west of it than to the other side — 
lies the "oil-belt," or the strip of territory within 
which oil and natural-gas are found.* This 
strip, or belt, is irregular in width, varying from 
forty to sixty miles, and its boundaries are not 
clearly marked or known ; so that test wells, 
or " wild-cat " wells as they are called, often lead 
to the discovery of rich oil territory in sections be- 
fore supposed to be "off the belt," as the saying 
is. However, a knowledge of one general fact has 
been gained — that the oil-belt, in its general di- 
rection, lies along what is known as the " forty- 
five-degree line," a line running midway between 
the north and east and the south and west points 
of the compass. And this line, you will notice, 
runs nearly parallel with the Allegheny mountains. 
Oil is not found everywhere within the "belt," 
but it seems to be collected far under the surface 
of the earth, in great basins, or " fields " as they are 
called — "the Bradford field," and "the Butler 
field," for instance. After a while, the fields are 
pumped dry, and then new ones are searched for, 
and if found are, in their turn, emptied. These 
fields are separated by many miles of "dry," or 
barren, territory. And the fields themselves are 
often divided into a number of " pools" by narrow 
strips of dry territory. 

Geologists differ in their theories as to the origin 
of the oil, and how it comes to be where it is now 
found, far below the soil, in certain rocks — from 
which it takes its name, "rock oil," or petroleum, 
from two Latin words, petra, a rock, and oleum, oil. 
The operations connected with boring for oil 

* This refers only to Pennsylvania. Oil is found in other pla 



can be most readily explained and understood by 
following, in imagination, the work as it actually 
goes forward, or rather downward, in some real 
well. Let us, then imagine ourselves the locators 
and owners of a well, and so note all the facts in 
regard to the work. The writer has selected a real 
well, now flowing, as a good one for us to bore 
over again, in fancy, as its history presents all the 
operations and circumstances connected with the 
boring and after-working of any well. Some of 
these processes, however, are not found necessary 
with a great many oil-wells. 

Having selected the spot, we must get ready our 
"rig" — our buildings, machinery, and tools. Upon 
a foundation of heavy timbers laid upon the 
ground, we build our derrick — a tall, skeleton-like 
building, twenty feet square at the bottom, and 
tapering on all sides to the top, which is about 
three feet square, and is over eighty feet from the 
ground. While we are at the top, let us make fast 
the two pulleys over which our cables, or ropes, are 
to run. We will go down by the ladder, which 
is a necessary part of the derrick, for, in boring, 
frequent trips to the top must be made. The 
corner- pieces of the derrick — 
"legs," as they are called 
-are simply planks nailed 
together in trough-shape, 
and placed one section 
above another, to the top ; 
but the numerous braces 





FRONT VIEW OF THE ENGINE-HOUSE AND DERRICK. 

and cross-braces bind them firmly together and 
make the structure stanch and strong. The 
lower part of the derrick is boarded up, floored, 
and roofed, making a large room in which the 
hired drillers work. Two sides of this room 
extend a little beyond the main part. In one of 
the recesses, or added spaces thus formed, is 
placed the bull-wheel — the great reel on which is 
wound the drill-cable ; in the other is the black- 
smith's forge, which is needed for repairing and 

es, but nowhere else has it been of such value to the world. 



B O K I N G F OR OIL. 



43 




Y ij^A IT P 



MAP OF THE OIL-REGIONS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



44 



B O R I N G FOR UlL. 



[November, 



sharpening tools. The engine 
is placed some distance from 
the derrick ; the engine- 
house and derrick being 
connected by a long, nar- / 
row, covered passage- / 
way, called the belt- / 
house, in which run the / 

belts from the engine, / 
to drive the bull- 
wheel and other 
machinery. The 
boiler which sup- 



/ 




. ENGINE. 2. BULL-WHEEL. 3. SAND-HEEL. 4. WALKING-BEAM. 
5. TEMPER-SCREW. 6. DRILL-CABLE. 7. SAND-PUMP AND BOILER- 
9 CLAMPS. IO TANK. 



S. DRIVE-WHEEL, 



plies the steam is usually left outside to the tender 
mercies of the weather. Midway between the derrick 
and the engine-house, and against the belt-house, 
is a second reel, but smaller than the bull- wheel, 
on which is wound a smaller rope, used with the 
sand-pump and bailer. Still closer to the derrick 
stands a huge square post, ten or twelve feet high, 
firmly braced. Balanced across the top of this 
post is a great beam, one end of which extends 
into the derrick to a 
point over the well- 
hole in the center of 
the floor ; the other 
end can be connected 
with a crank beside 
the belt-house, when 
necessary, by means 
of a heavy shaft. This 
beam is the walking- 
beam, and is so piv- 
oted upon the top of 
the great post that 
when it is attached to 
the crank, and the 
engine is started, the 
ends of the beam al- 
ternately go up and 
down. So much for 
our shop and machinery 
Boring for oil or 




DIAGRAM OF DRILLING, AS SEEN 
ROM THE REAR OF THE DERRICK. 



M 



Now for our tools, 
natural-gas is not done like 
wood- boring, though the word may have led you to 
suppose so. The hole is cut or broken, deeper and 
deeper, by the continued dropping of the heavy 
drill, the lower end of which is given a blunt 
edge. The drill is composed of several separate 



the stem, next above ; then the jars ; and at the 
top, the sinker, to which the cable is attached. 
These parts screw into one another very tightly 
at the ends, and are readily put together 
or taken apart. The bit is four feet* tv>. 

long, four inches in diameter at the upper 
end, where it screws into the stem above, 
slightly flattened upon two sides, and 
widening at the bottom to the size of the 
hole to be drilled. (Three and often four 
sizes of bits are used in a single well. 
From five hundred to seven hundred 
feet are bored with a ten-inch bit, 
after which a seven and five- 
eighths inch bit is used, then a 
five and five-eighths inch bit, and 
frequently the last section of the 
well is bored with a four and a 
quarter inch bit.) The stem is a 
solid, round, iron rod. four inches 
through, and thirty-five to forty 
feet long ; it gives weight and force to 
the blow. The jars are about six feet 
long, and consist of two heavy steel jaws 
fitting closely together, but made to slide 
up and down upon, or within, each other, 
somewhat like two links of a close chain. 
The sinker is another heavy piece like 
the stem, adding needed weight and 
balance ; it is twelve feet long, and forms 
the upper part of the drill. The accom- 
panying diagram gives a good idea of the 
form and shape of the various parts of the 
drill, although it is impossible within so 
small a space to show the relative sizes of 
the separate sections. The drill complete 
is about seventy feet long, and weighs 
three thousand pounds. 

In beginning the actual work of boring, 
the heavy cable, or drill-rope, is wound 
upon the bull-wheel, and the end carried 
up over the pulley at the top of the derrick, 
and brought down to be made fast to the 
drill, at the top of the sinker. The upper 
part of the hole for seventy or eighty feet 
is "spudded" out. until the top of the 
long drill can get below the walking- 
beam, when the regular drilling, orboring, 
is commenced. As the work is the same 
at all points, we need not follow it foot 
by foot; let us take it up at the depth of, say, five 
hundred feet. Before reaching that depth, the 
drill will have passed through various veins of clay, 
limestone, sandstone, bituminous coal, etc.. and 
will have tapped many streams of fresh water; and 
now, at a depth of five hundred feet, it is cutting 
and breaking its way through solid rock. 



ff 






THE 
DRILL. 



parts — the bit, or cutting-part, at the bottom 

* There are other sizes of tools, but the dimensions here given are the sizes commonly used. 



BORING FUR OIL. 



45 



Entering the drill-room, we find the drill is 
about to be "run." It is now hanging at one 
side of the derrick, out of the way of another ope- 
ration, which has just been finished. The drillers 
(for there are two men, a driller and a tool-dresser, 
to a set, and two sets, each working twelve hours, 
from twelve o'clock to twelve) are able to control 
the machinery by means of cords and levers, with- 
out leaving the derrick. The bull-wheel is started 
slowly, and the drill raised and swung over 
the hole. Then the bull-wheel is reversed, and 
the drill plunges down the well. As its speed 
increases, the cable spins off the rumbling bull- 
wheel, and the whole derrick creaks and rocks. 



well two or three feet every time, and keeping this 
up at the rate of thirty or more blows a minute. 

Every time the drill is raised for a blow, the 
driller catches the handles of the clamps and twists 
the rope a little. This slight twisting of the 
rope at the top turns the drill a little for each 
blow, though the point of the drill is hundreds or, 
it may be, thousands of feet below. And this 
turning is necessary to keep the hole round and 
true, and to prevent the tools from becoming 
wedged or fastened in seams of the rocks. 

The clamps hold the cable fast to the walking- 
beam, and so, after the drill has cut a short distance, 
it can get no deeper, though it should go up and 




EVERY TIME THE DRILL IS RAISED FOR A BLOW, THE DRILLER CATCHES THE HANDLES OF THE CLAMPS AND TWISTS THE ROPE A LITTLE. 



The drillers watch the cable, and. as they see by 
the length unreeled that the drill is near the 
bottom, they check its speed, and stop it as it 
touches. The drill must be raised a short dis- 
tance, and allowed to drop back, and this opera- 
tion must be continued repeatedly and regularly ; 
every blow thus given by the drill cuts and breaks 
the hole still deeper. For this work, the walk- 
ing-beam is brought into action. Clamps con- 
nected with the derrick-end of the beam are made 
fast to the cable, the shaft at the outer end is 
attached to the crank, and the engine is started. 
Up and down go the ends of the walking-beam, 
raising and dropping the drill at the bottom of the 



down forever; it is at the end of its rope, and must 
be lowered. It is not lowered by giving the clamps 
another hold a little higher up on the cable ; the 
clamps remain as they are. But attached to them 
is a long screw, four feet long, set in an iron 
frame. The upper end of the frame is fastened 
to the walking-beam, and forms the connection 
between it and the clamps. By letting out 
this screw, the drill is lowered ; and so, without 
stopping the work, the driller every little while 
lets out some of the screw, and so keeps lowering 
the drill, as it cuts its way, until all the screw- 
has been let out. The drill has then cut the length 
of the bit, or one "bit," as the drillers saw Some- 



4 6 



BORING FOR OIL. 



[November, 



times, in favorable material, a new grip of the 
cable may be taken and the screw run out again, 
so as to cut a length of two bits before the loose 
pieces of rock are taken out of the hole ; but usu- 
ally they are removed at the completion by the 
drill of each bit. The clamps are loosed, and 
the cable thus freed. The bull-wheel is started, 
and the timbers creak and groan as the cable is 
wound up, until, with a rush, the long, black drill 
suddenly shoots out of the hole, all dripping with 
muddy water, and is again swung to one side to 
rest there until the hole has been cleaned out. 

Water is always kept in the hole to make the 
drilling easier, even if, as sometimes happens, it 
must be poured down from the top ; the bits of 
broken and powdered rock at the bottom are 
therefore lying in water. To get this rock and 
water out, the sand-pump is used. This is an 
iron bucket, four or rive inches in diameter and 
six or eight feet long. It has at the bottom a 
valve which takes in the muddy water and bits of 
stone, as the pump sinks, and prevents their escape 
when it is raised. 

The sand-pump is attached to the smaller rope, 
wound upon the outside reel and running over the 
smaller pulley at the top of the derrick. It is 
"run" one or more times, until the hole is again 
clean. Then it is put aside, the drill is again 
swung over the hole, and, with a great rattle 
and roar and a general creaking and groaning, it 
darts down once more to cut its way into nature's 
treasure-house. 

Water, fresh and salt, is usually present, and 
greatly interferes with the work. Forwhile it is true 
that there must be water in the hole while drilling 
is going on, yet the supply is generally far greater 
than the demand — water often standing in the hole 
almost to the top. Usually, no attempt is made to 
remedy this until the well has been drilled below 
all the fresh-water streams — say, five hundred 
feet down, in our well ; then the nuisance is done 
away with by "casing" the well, which means, 
lining it with iron pipe. On some fields, two and 
often three " strings " or sizes of casing are needed. 
First a pipe seven and five-eighths inches in 
diameter is sent down to shut off the fresh- 
water streams. Then, to keep out a soft caving 
rock, a smaller pipe, five and five-eighths inches 
in diameter, is sent down inside the first casing 
and to a far greater depth ; while frequently, inside 
this, a four and a quarter inch pipe is put down, 
still farther, to shut out the salt water near the 
bottom. Every " string" extends to the top of the 
well, and should fit easily in that section of the 
well which is of the next larger diameter. Ifitdoes 
not, the hole must be "reamed out" ; that is. it 
must be drilled over again with a wider bit, called 



a reamer, and thus enlarged to make room for the 
casing. This is a tedious operation and, of course, 
stops for a time all the work of drilling or deep- 
ening the well. When the reaming has been ac- 
complished, the casing is put down. The long 
pieces or joints of pipe are screwed together at 
the ends, at the top of the well, as they are being 
lowered, and so they form a water-tight lining to 
the well, the lower end resting upon the shoulder, or 
rim, left by the reamer. 

Xow, drilling goes on again, as at first, and no 
more trouble from water may arise — at least, none 
from fresh water ; but frequently, in certain regions, 
large basins of salt water are tapped at great 
depths. If there is not much water coming in, 
the bailer can be used ; it is another long bucket, 
similar to the sand-pump, and designed to clear 
the well of water or oil. But sometimes the bailer 
will not answer, and the workers must then again 
resort to casing. And if they wish to continue the 
same size of casing they have last used, all the hun- 
dreds of feet of it already in must be drawn out, 
and the tedious reaming process be begun where 
it was left off, and continued for hundreds of feet 
until it reaches below the salt-water inlet. And 
the casing to that depth must then be put down, 
before the work can again go on. 

Other hindering incidents and accidents, while 
they may not occur, are always to be expected in 
every well. The cable may break, and the tools 
be "lost." "Fishing-tools" are then attached 
to the cable, and the drill is fished for until it is 
caught and drawn up. Or, the bit may meet a 
seam in the rock, so that it can not cut the hole 
true at the bottom. Sometimes special tools must 
be employed to remedy this, though sending down 
a wooden plug, and drilling through it, may cause 
the bit to cut again as it should. Again, the bit 
may get so fastened in such a seam that the drill 
can not be raised. Now the "jars " at the top of the 
drill come into play. Without them the tools could 
never be loosened. A steady pull on the cable avails 
nothing ; but as the jaws can slide two or three feet 
up and down upon each other, every jerk upon the 
cable brings them together with a heavy jar. This 
generally loosens the bit. though it may require 
several hours, or even days, to accomplish it. 
Finally, it sometimes happens that the bit can 
not be jarred loose, or the lost tools can not be 
"fished" out, and then the well must be aban- 
doned, and all the work done must go for nothing. 

Otherwise, however, the work goes on, day and 
night, until the hoped-for oil or gas is found, or 
the well is abandoned as a "dry hole." This does 
not mean a hole free from water, but one in which 
oil — or gas, if it has been drilled for — is not found. 
The well that is probably the deepest one in the 



BORING FOR OIL. 



47 



world is such a dry hole. It is the Buchanan well, 
near Washington, Pa. It is four thousand three 
hundred and three feet deep — nearly twice the 
depth of any other deep well. 

Wells drilled for oil are abandoned, sometimes, 
because gas is struck in such volume as to prevent 
further drilling — often the heavy drill and long 
cable are blown entirely out of the well by the great 
force of the escaping gas. 

Let us say that we have been drilling for two 
months, and are down to the oil-sand. This is 
not a bed of loose sand, but a deep vein of sand- 
stone, very loose, or porous, and full of pebbles. It 
is only in these beds of sandrock that oil and natu- 
ral-gas are found. There are several well-known 
oil-sands, lying at different depths, the third layer 
from the surface being the one usually furnish- 
ing or " producing" the greatest quantities of oil 
or gas. At Washington, Pennslyvania, it is two 
thousand two hundred feet below the surface, 
but it lies less deep as we go northward, all the 
rocks dipping to the southwest. 

When the sand is reached, all fires and lights 
are put out, and the boiler and forge are re- 
moved to a considerable distance from the well, 
as a sudden rush of oil or gas, if fire were within 
reach of it, would create a very extensive and 
expensive bonfire. The drilling goes cautiously 
on ; the drill cuts down into the sandrock, and we 
"strike oil !" At once all is excitement, and the 
news is telegraphed abroad that oil has been found. 
The well is plugged until a tank can be built for 
the oil; and while we are waiting for this, let us 
learn some fact about " producing wells," as they 
are called. 

A "gusher" is a well which throws out large 
quantities of oil ; a record of eleven thousand bar- 
rels a day has been reached 
by one well ! There must 
be plenty of oil in the sand, 
and enough gas to force it up 
the well, to give us a gusher. 
But a well may be a gush- 
er at the start, and afterward 
change ; or sometimes, as we 
shall see, it may be made 
a gusher, though it shows 
•go-devil"— used but little oil at first. LJnless 
there is considerable gas in 
the sand, the oil, whether 
much or little, can not be forced up. If there is no 
gas, the oil must be pumped up, and the well is 
called a "pumper." An iron pipe, two or three 
inches wide, with a valve at the bottom, is put 
down the well, like the casing; a "sucker rod" 
of wood or iron is put in, the end attached to the 
walking-beam, and the oil pumped up and into 




THE 

FOR " SHOOTING " AJ 

OIL-WELL. 

(SEE NEXT PAGE.) 




tanks. Where there is considerable gas, but not 
enough to lift the well full of oil and make a 
gusher, we may make the oil flow by "packing" 
the well, instead of pumping it. The small 
pipe is put in, but without the sucker-rod, and 
the space all around it, at the bottom, is closely 



4 8 



BORING FOR OIL. 



[November, 




AND MAKING IT 



packed with a rubber ring made for the purpose. 
This leaves but a small hole for the oil to flow up 
through, and the pressure of the gas through this 
smaller hole is often sufficient to raise the oil to the 
surface ; and the well flows. When a well does not 
produce much oil at first, or when the production 
of a gusher has fallen off, it is sometimes thought 
that the quantity may be increased by loosening, 
or breaking up, the sandrock at the bottom of 
the well. To do this, the well is "torpedoed," or 
"shot." The torpedo is a long tin bucket or shell 
filled with nitro-glycerine — from twenty to one 
hundred and fifty quarts, as the case is supposed to 
demand. It is carefully lowered to the bottom, and 
when all is ready, a queer-looking, pointed piece 
of iron, called the "go-devil," is dropped down 



the well, and, striking a 
cap on the top of the tor- 
pedo, causes a terrific ex- 
plosion at the bottom of the 
well. This explosion breaks 
and loosens the sandrock 
around, and gives the oil — 
or gas, if in a gas-well — a 
chance to get to the well. 
The explosion is faintly 
heard, but it is not felt, at 
the top of the well. The "re- 
sponse " may come quickly, 
or may be delayed for some 
hours ; or it may not come 
at all, which means, gener- 
ally, that there is but little 
oil, if any, to come. A good 
shot, in a good well, may 
soon respond by sending 
the oil gushing up into the 
tanks, or high above the 
derrick, if the tanks are not 
connected with the well. 
In a seemingly poor well, 
the production is thus often 
greatly increased, and the 
well made a gusher. 

Different sections of the 
oil-regions produce differ- 
ent qualities of oil. From 
some wells, it comes clear 
and yellow ; from others, 
thick and dark. Pipes 
carry it from the wells to 
great tanks, from which it 
is sent to the refineries by 
rail, in tank-cars, or through 
pipe-lines across the coun- 
;shek." try, over mountain, valley, 

and stream. 
. But to return to our well. When our tank is 
ready, the plug is removed, and for a little while the 
well flows steadily. Then, let us suppose, it stops. 
It is drilled deeper into the sand, and, every five or 
six days, as the gas-pressure gathers, it gushes for 
a few minutes, throwing the oil high above the der- 
rick. It is finally shot, and responds with another 
brief gush — and again stops. Packing is resorted 
to, but without success. Finally, pumping is tried, 
and our well, we will say, now yields a fair quantity 
of beautiful amber oil of the finest quality. 

But almost every well is more than an ordinary 
oil-well, for a time; it is a "mystery." A well is 
called a " mystery " when the amount of its yield is 
kept secret by the owners, for the purpose of making 
money by affecting the price of oil in the market. 



1 886. J 



BORING FOR OIL. 



49 




If a new well proves to be a gusher, the 
price of oil is lowered; if but a " small pro- 
ducer " or a dry hole, prices go up. So, by 
keeping secret the character of a new well, 
those on the "inside" are able to take advan- 
tage of any changes that occur in the price of 
oil through the rumors which immediately get 
afloat concerning it, and to make money by 
buying and selling oil — speculating, as it is 
called. It sometimes happens, even, that 
false rumors are circulated by interested per- 
sons. Every effort is made, however, to dis- 
cover what the mystery really is. " Scouts" 
are sent out for that especial purpose, and they 
use every device and stratagem to obtain the 
desired information, sometimes even climbing 
trees and endeavoring with field-glasses to spy 
out the secret. On the other hand, every 
effort is made to prevent them from learning 
anything ; and some amusing and exciting in- 
cidents occur in consequence. A guard is on 
duty at the well, day and night, and outsiders 
are kept at as great a distance as possible. 



1 « 



'SCOUTS ' TRYING TO SPY OUT A "MYSTERY. 



Vol. XIV. 



5° 



RICHARD CARRS BABY 



[November, 




» 



ichais> H. 



6,-i 



A FEW years ago, all boys living in the 
town of Princeton who were of that age when 
it is easy to remember the fall, winter, spring, 
and summer as the foot-ball, coasting, swim- 
ming, and base-ball seasons, regarded Rich- 
ard Carr as embodying their ideal of human 
greatness. 

When they read in the history primers 
how George Washington became the Father 
of his Country, they felt sure that with a like 
opportunity Richard Carr would come to the 
front and be at least the Stepfather of his 
Country. 

They lay in wait for him at the post-office, 

and as soon as he came in sight would ask 

for his mail and run to give it to him ; they 

would go ahead of him on the other side of 

the street, cross over and meet him with a 

very important " How do you do, Mr. Carr?" 

and were quite satisfied if he gave them an 

amused " Hello, youngster ! " in return. 

Their efforts to imitate his straight, military walk, 

with shoulders squared and head erect, were of great 

benefit to their lungs and personal appearance. 

Those ragged hangers-on of the college, too, 
who picked up odd dimes from the students by 



on Richard Carr, and shouted " Hurrah for you, 
Carr ! " whenever that worthy walked by. 

Those who have not already guessed the position 
which Richard Carr held in the college will be 
surprised to learn that he was the captain of the 
college foot-ball team, and those who can not 



understand the admiration that Arthur 
Waller, and Willie Beck, and the rest of 
the small fry of Princeton felt for this young 
man would better stop here — for neither 
will they understand this story. 

Among all these young hero-worshipers, 
Richard Can's most devoted follower was 
Arthur Waller — "Arty," as his friends 
called him ; for, while the other boys, look- 
ing upon Carr as their ideal, hoped that in 
time they might themselves be even as 
great as he, Arthur felt that, to him at 
least this glorious possibility must be de- 
nied. Arthur was neither ' strong nor 
sturdy, and could, he knew, never hope to 
be like the captain of the foot-ball team, 
whose strength and physique seemed there- 
fore all the grander to him. 

He never ran after Carr, nor tried to draw 
his attention as the others did ; he was 
content to watch and form his own ideas 
about his hero from a distance. Richard Can- 
was more than the captain of the team to him. 
He was the one person who, above all others, 
had that which Arthur lacked — strength; and so 
Arthur did not merely envy him, — he worshiped 
him. 

Although Arthur Waller was somewhat older in 
his way of thinking than his friends, he enjoyed 
the same games they enjoyed, and would have 
liked to play them, if he had been able ; but, as 
he was not, the boys usually asked him to keep the 
score, or to referee the matches they played on the 



m 



RICHARD CARR S BABY. 



51 



cow pasture with one of the college's cast-off foot- 
balls. On the whole, the boys were very good to 
Arthur. 

It was the first part of the last half of the Yale- 
Princeton foot-ball match, played on the Princeton 
grounds. The modest grand stand was filled with 
voung ladies and college boys, while townspeople 
of all sorts and conditions, ages, and sizes covered 
the fences and carriages, and crowded closely on 
the whitewashed lines, cheering and howling at 
the twenty-two very dirty, very determined, and 
very cool young men who ran, rushed, dodged, and 
"tackled" in the open space before them, — the 
most interested and least excited individuals on the 
grounds. 

Arthur Waller had crept between the specta- 
tors until he had reached the very front of the 
crowd, and had stood through the first half of the 
game with bated breath, his finger-nails pressed 
into his palms, and his eyes following only one of 
the players. He was entirely too much excited 
to shout or call as the others did ; he was perfectly 
silent except for the little gasps of fear that he 
gave involuntarily when Richard Carr struck the 
ground with more than the usual number of men 
on top of him. 

Suddenly, Mr. Hobbes, of Yale, kicked the ball, 
but kicked it sidewise ; and so, instead of going 
straight down the field, it turned and whirled over 
the heads of the crowd and settled among the car- 
riages. A panting little Yale man tore wildly- 
after it, beseeching Mr. Hobbes, in agonizing 
tones, to put him "on side." Mr. Hobbes ran 
past the spot where the ball would strike, and the 
Yale man dashed after it through the crowd. 
Behind him, his hair flying, his eyes fixed on the 
ball over his head, every muscle on a strain, came 
Richard Carr. He went at the crowd, who tum- 
bled over one another like a flock of sheep, in 
their efforts to clear the way for him. With his 
head in the air, he did not see Arthur striving to 
get out of his way ; he only heard a faint cry of 
pain when he stumbled for an instant, and, look- 
ing back, saw the crowd closing around a little 
boy who was lying very still and white, but who 
was not crying. Richard Carr stopped as he 
ran back, and setting Arthur on his feet, asked, 
"Are you hurt, youngster?" But, as Arthur only 
stared at him and said nothing, the champion 
hurried on again into the midst of the fray. 

" There is one thing we must have before 
the next match." said the manager of the team, 
as the players were gathered in the dressing-rooms 
after the game, "and that is a rope to keep the 
people back. They will crowd on the field, and 



get in the way of the half-backs, and, besides, it is 
not safe for them to stand so near. Carr knocked 
over a little kid this afternoon, and hurt him quite 
badly, I believe." 

"What's that?" said Richard Carr, turning 
from the group of substitutes who were explaining 
how they would have played the game and ten- 
dering congratulations. 

" I was saying," continued the manager, " that 
we ought to have a rope to keep the people off the 
field ; they interfere with the game ; and they say 
that you hurt a little fellow when you ran into the 
crowd during the last half." 

"Those boys should n't be allowed to stand in 
front there," said Richard Carr; "but I did n't 
know I hurt the little fellow. Who was he? 
where does he live ? Do you know ? " 

'■ It was the widow Waller's son, sah," volun- 
teered Sam, the colored attendant. " That 's her 
house with the trees around it : you can see the roof 
from here. 1 think that 's where they took him." 

"Took him!" exclaimed Richard Carr, catch- 
ing up his great-coat. "Was he so badly hurt? 
You must wait until I come back, Sam." 

Sam looked after him in astonishment as he ran 
on a jog-trot toward the gate. " That 's a nice 
example to set a team," growled Sam. "Run- 
ning off to sick chillun without changin' his 
clothes or rub'oin' down. He should n' be capt'n 
ef he don't know any better dan dat." 

A pale, gentle-faced woman, who looked as if 
she had been crying, came to the door when 
Richard Carr rang the bell of the cottage which 
had been pointed out to him from the athletic 
grounds. When she saw his foot-ball costume, 
the look of welcome on her face died out very 
suddenly. 

" Does the little boy live here who was hurt on 
the athletic grounds ? " asked Richard Carr, won- 
dering if it could have been the doctor she was 
expecting. 

" Yes, sir," answered the lady coldly. 

"I came to see how he was: I am the man 
wlio ran against him. I wish to explain to you 
how it happened — I suppose you are Mrs. Wal- 
ler?" (Richard Carr hesitated, and bowed, but 
the lady only bowed her head in return, and said 
nothing.) "It was accidental, of course," con- 
tinued Carr. "He was in the crowd when I ran 
in after the ball; it was flying over our heads, and 
I was looking up at it and didn't see him. I hope 
he is all right now." Before the lady could answer, 
Richard Carr's eyes wandered from her face and 
caught sight of a little figure lying on the sofa in 
the wide hall. Stepping across the floor as lightly 
as he could in his heavy shoes, Carr sat down beside 
Arthur on the sofa. " Well, old man," he said, 



52 



RICHARD CARR S BABY. 



[November, 



taking Arthur's hands in his, "I hope I did n't 
hurt you much. No bones broken, — are there? 
You were very plucky not to cry, let me tell you. 
It was a very hard fall, and I 'm very, very sorry ; 
but I did n't see you, you know." 

•' Oh, no, sir," said Arthur quickly, with his eyes 
fixed on Richard Carr's face. " I knew you did n't 
see me, and I thought maybe you would come when 
you heard I was hurt. I don't mind it a bit, from 
you. Because Willie Beck says — he is the captain 
of our team, you know — that you would n't hurt 
any one if you could help it ; he says you never hit 
a man on the field unless he 's playing foul or try- 
ing to hurt some of your team." 

Richard Carr doubted whether this recital of his 




WELL, OLD MAN, SAID CARR, ' 
YOU MUCH.' 



HOPE I Dll 



virtues would appeal as strongly to Mrs. Waller as 
it did to Arthur, so he said, "And who is Willie 
Beck?" 

"Willie Beck! Why, don't you know Willie 
Beck ? " exclaimed Arthur, who was rapidly losing 
his awe of Richard Carr. " He says he knows you ; 
he is the boy who holds your coat for you during 
the practice games." 

Richard Carr saw he was running a risk of hurt- 
ing some young admirer's feelings, so he said, 
"Oh, yes, the boy who holds my coat for me. 
And he is the captain of your team, is he ? Well, 
the next time you play, you wear this cap and tell 
Willie Beck and the rest of the boys that I gave it 
to you because you were so plucky when I knocked 
you down." 

With these words he pressed his black and orange 
cap into Arthur's hand and rose to go, but Arthur 



looked so wistfully at him, and then at the captain's 
cap, that he stopped. 

" I 'd like to wear it, Mr. Carr," he said slowly. 
•' I 'd like to ever so much, Mamma," he added, 
turning' his eyes to where Mrs. Waller stood look- 
ing out at the twilight and weeping softly, — " but 
you see, sir, I don't play myself. I generally 
referee. I 'm not very strong, sir, not at present ; 
but I will be some day, — wont I, Mamma? And 
the doctor says 1 must keep quiet until I am older, 
and not play games that are rough. For he says 
if I got a shock or a fall I might not get over it, or 
it might put me back — and I do so want to get 
well just as soon as I can. You see, sir, it 's my 
spine " 

At this the tender-hearted giant gave a gasp of 
sympathy and remorse, and, sinking on his knees 
beside the sofa, he took Arthur in his arms, feel- 
ing very guilty and very miserable. 

For a moment, Arthur only looked startled and 
distressed, and patted Richard Carr's broad back 
with an idea of comforting him ; but then he cried : 

" Oh, but I did n't mean to blame you, Mr. 
Carr ! I know you did n't see me. Don't you 
worry about me, Mr. Carr. I 'm going to get well 
some day. Indeed I am, sir ! " 

Whether it was that the doctor whom Richard 
Carr's father sent on from New York knew more 
about Arthur's trouble than the other doctors did, 
or whether it was that Richard Carr saw that 
Arthur had many medicines, pleasant and un- 
pleasant, which his mother had been unable to 
get for him, I do not know, — but I do know that 
Arthur got better day by day. 

And day after day, Richard Carr stopped on his 
way to the field, and on his way back again, to see 
his "Baby," as he called him, and to answer the 
numerous questions put to him by Arthur's com- 
panions. They always assembled at the hour of 
Richard Carr's arrival in order to share some of 
the glory that had fallen on their comrade, and to 
cherish and carry away whatever precious thoughts 
Richard Carr happened to let drop concerning 
foot-ball, the weather, or any other vital subject 
of college life. 

As soon as the doctor said Arthur could be 
moved, Richard Carr used to stop for him in a 
two-seated carriage and drive him in state to the 
foot-ball field. And after he had drawn up the 
carriage where Arthur could get a good view of 
the game, he would hand over the reins to one of 
those vulture-like individuals who hover around 
the field of battle, waiting for some one to be hurt, 
and who are known as "substitutes." In his black 
and orange uniform, one of these fellows made a 
very gorgeous coachman indeed. 



RICHARD CARR S BABY. 



53 



And though the students might yell, and the cheeks all aglow, and the substitute's arm around 
townspeople shout ever so loudly, Richard Carr him to keep him from falling over in his excite- 
only heard one shrill little voice, which called to ment. And the other teams who came to play 
him above all the others ; and as that voice got at Princeton soon learned about the captain's 






t'lbMis 




RICHARD CARR HEARD ONE SHRILL LITTLE VOICE, WHICH CALLED TO HIM ABOVE ALL THE OTHERS. 



stronger day by day, Richard Carr got back his 
old spirit and interest in the game, which, since the 
Yale match, he seemed to have lost. 

The team said Richard Carr's " Baby" brought 
them luck, and they called him their "Mascot," 
and presented him with a flag of the college colors ; 
and when the weather grew colder they used to 
smother him in their white woolen jerseys, so that 
he looked like a fat polar bear. 

It was a very pretty sight, indeed, to see how 
Richard Carr and the rest of the team, whenever 
they had scored or had made a good play, would 
turn first for their commendation to where Arthur 
sat perched above the crowd, waving his flag, his 



"Baby," and inquired if he were on the field; 
and if he was, they would go up and gravely shake 
hands with him, as with some celebrated individual 
holding a public reception. 

Richard Carr is out West now at the head of 
a great sheep ranch, and Arthur Waller enters 
Princeton next year. I do not know whether he 
will be on the team, though he is strong enough; 
but I am sure he will help to hand down the fame 
of Richard Carr, and that he will do it in such a 
way that his hero will be remembered as the pos- 
sessor of certain qualities, perhaps not so highly 
prized, but quite as excellent, as were those which 
fitted him to be the captain of the team. 



Now, players all, mark what I say : 
Whatever be the game you play, 
Wit against size may win the day. 



54 



IX 



FLAMINGO ROOKERY 



[November 



KANDIKE W 



By Eudora S. Bumstead. 



Did ever you sail in a dream-canoe 

To the honey-comb reels of Kandikew, 

The island built by aquatical bees 

Who carry their sweets down under the seas? 

The sands of the beach that shimmer and shine 

Are powdered sugar white and fine ; 

While billows of syrup fall and rise 

O'er candy pebbles of every size. 



There 's a perfume borne on every breeze 
From the fruit preserves on the orchard trees ; 
There are limpid jellies in every lake, 
And hills and mountains of frosted cake ; 
There are children here who roam at will, 
Free to forage and eat their fill, 
But they lack one thing of bliss complete — 
For they can not endure the taste of sweet ! 



So they sigh in vain for a sylvan shade 
With brooks and rivers of lemonade, 
And lakes of vinegar clear and strong, 
Where they 'd fish for pickles the whole day long. 
And ships come sailing from happier climes 
With crab-apples, cranberries, lemons, and limes, 
For these, I 've heard, and 't is doubtless true, 
Are all they can eat in Kandikew. 




IN A FLAMINGO ROOKERY 
By Charles Frederick Holder. 



MONO the many vessels 
that find their way into 
the great ports of Boston 
and New York, certain 
low, trim-looking schoon- 
ers are conspicuous. They 
might almost pass for 
yachts. They are, gen- 
erally, New England ves- 
sels, in the fruit trade, 
running between Nassau 
or other Southern ports 
and New York or Bos- 
ton. Many of these ves- 
sels on arriving at New 
York lie alongside the 
East River docks in the 
neighborhood of Fulton ferry, and are well worth 
a visit during the busy months when bananas and 
pine-apples, oranges and lemons and other tropical 
fruits are in season. Besides the cargo of tropical 
luxuries, the skipper of one of these boats usually 



has, stowed away on board, some curiosity, some 
strange lizard or hermit-crab, or curious bird, that 
he is bringing home to a friend. It may be imag- 
ined, therefore, that visits of curiosity to a lately- 
arrived fruiter are often well repaid ; and so there 
was nothing remarkable in the fact that one morn- 
ing about four o'clock, when the docks were cold 
and deserted, and the watchmen were hiding in 
dark corners endeavoring to steal a nap before the 
sun rose, a party of boys walked hurriedly down 
one of these long East River piers in New York 
and anxiously inquired if Capt. Sam Whittlefield's 
schooner Red Snapper had been spoken. 

"She 's about off Governor's Island now." said 
the sleepy watchman. The boys, glad to know 
that the schooner was so near, waited her arrival 
with some spasmodic exercise and many impatient 
looks along the line of tapering masts that fringed 
the East side docks southward toward the Battery. 
At last they were rewarded when, after a half hour 
of waiting, the Red Snapper hove in sight behind 
a fussy little tug. As the sun looked over the tops 



IN A FLAMINGO ROOKERY 



55 



of the tall buildings, and cast its good-morning 
beams into the dark slips, she ran in and was 
made fast. 

"How are you, Captain?" shouted one of the 
expectant group, as there came on deck a short, 
fat, red-faced man, with so jolly and good-natured 
a countenance that you would wish to shake hands 
with him at first sight. 

"Wal', wal'," exclaimed the Yankee skipper 
with a laugh of recognition, " Why, it 's the boys!" 

Then commenced a series of questions — "Have 
you brought my centipede?" "Could you find 
a hermit-crab, Captain!" "Did you remember 
Tom's octopus?" and so on, until the captain, 
ruddier than ever from laughing, invited all hands 
on board. As they tumbled down the compan- 
ion-way ladder, those ahead came to a sudden 
halt, for out of the gloom was heard an unearthly 
"honk! honk! honk!" 

" Come right on down ! " said the jolly skipper. 
"Don't mind the singing; it's my pet flamingo." 
As their eyes became accustomed to the darkness 
of the place, the boys saw a magnificent flamingo 
sitting very contentedly on a box at the end of the 
cabin, with its neck (or so it certainly seemed) tied 
in a bow knot. 

" He doesn't need any necktie," laughed the 
captain; "he can tie his own neck into more 
quirks and knots than you can imagine. Where 
did I get him ? Wal', as they say, thereby hangs a 
tale. You '11 find the plantains and pomegranates 
in that first locker, and here 's some guava jelly 
and Nassau biscuit. When you've discussed them, 
I '11 tell you about my pet." 

When breakfast, in which the boys and the long- 
necked flamingo joined, was over, and the captain 
of the galley had removed the dishes, Captain Sam 
lighted his pipe, gave a preparatory look around at 
his small but attentive audience, surrounded him- 
self with a cloud of smoke, through which his 
jolly red face gleamed like the sun in a fog, and 
began his yarn. 

" In this last cruise," he said, " I was delayed in 
Nassau three weeks before I could get all the pine- 
apples and fruit that I wanted, and in the mean 
time I did n't know what to do with myself, for 
I 'm one of the kind that has to keep on the go, 
or else give up altogether. 

"But one day I met a friend who had a planta- 
tion on one of the outer Keys ; he asked me to go 
on a hunting trip with him, and I took him up on 
the minute. He lent me a gun, and the next day 
we were aboard his smack and off. For a week 
we cruised about from one place to another, and 
then he told me he was bent on showin' me the 
finest curiosity in the Bahamas. That same after- 
noon we brought up in a cove at Andros Island, 



one of the biggest of the whole lot, and I reckon 
about ninety miles long, more or less. As they say 
in the geographies, it is bounded on the north, east, 
south, and west by water; principal productions — 
sand and crabs. That night we slept aboard ship. 
The next morning, bright and early, we took the 
little dingey boat and had a couple of the men and 
the captain's son, a lad about the size of one of you 
boys, to row us over to the land. 

"We pulled along the shore, which was broken 
up by bays and creeks that seemed in places to cut 
clean through the island. The water was as clear 
as crystal, and corals, sea-fans and plumes, and 
angel-fish with wonderful colors could be seen in 
countless numbers ; now and then, too, we ran 
over a big nurse shark, or a turtle that made off 
leavin' a big wave behind to follow and tell just 
where it was goin'. All at once we rounded a 
point and saw a sight so queer that I must have 
sung out ; for the men stopped pullin' and we all 
looked for about a minute and did n't say a word. 
We had popped 'round a point and entered a little 
bay where the land was low. The sand was a pure 
white, but all along shore, a good way in, was a 
line that looked just like a streak of scarlet cloud, 
such as we often see in the south at sunset. It 
was mornin' then, however, and the contrast was 
too bright for clouds. 

" ' What do you think of that ? ' said my friend. 
' If that is n't worth comin' twelve hundred miles 
to see, I 'm mistaken ! ' 

" 'What is it?' I asked. 

"'Why,' says he, 'birds, man! nothin' but 
flamingoes ! And that is n't the funny part of it — 
every bird lives on a monument.' 

" I thought," continued the captain, " that this 
was a joke, but the men gave way at the oars, and 
we went toward the red streak with a rush. And 
soon, sure enough, I could make out the forms of 
the birds, though every one looked at first like a 
scarlet dash of color. They were standing along 
shore in rows and groups, their long, light-colored 
necks moving this way and that ; and the minute 
they heard the splash of the oars and saw us, they 
rose in a regular cloud, — not like ordinary birds, 
mind you. They just started and ran along the 
beach into the water, and so gradually got head- 
way ; and then they rose into the air in a great 
crimson cloud, their long slender legs towin' along 
behind. 

" We all were so excited that we hardly knew 
what we were doin' ; but our idea was to catch 
some of the birds alive, and, as some of them were 
still struggling to get up, we ran the boat into the 
sand and tumbled out on the shore, and in a mo- 
ment were in the strangest kind of a rookery you 
ever heard of. I '11 warrant ! Overhead was the 



56 



IX A FLAMINGO ROOKERY. 



[November, 



great cloud of birds flyin' oft" to sea, the beating 
of their wings, and their screams of ' honk ! honk ! ' 
makin' such a noise that you 'd have thought a 
hurricane was comin' on. We could hardly hear 
ourselves speak. We made a dash to get ahead, 
but it was almost impossible ; for the nests were 
columns of mud or clay from two to four feet 
high, and were packed so closely together that we 
could n't get over them quickly, I assure you. One 
of the men made a leap over a nest, but fell into a 
hole and was well-nigh wedged in. We tried to fol- 
low, floundering along, knockin' over the mounds, 
laughin' and shoutin', but soon had to give it up ; 
and as I crawled up on one of the bird-monuments, 
I saw that the captain's boy had beaten us all, and 
was right in the midst of the rookery. He 'd taken 
a long sprit as a pole, and so jumped from one 
mound to another. Then we all took oars and fol- 
lowed his lead, and in that way we got along quite 
rapidly. 

" Hard ? Yes ; most of the nests were solid as 
rock, so we merely had to jump from one to an- 
other. Some, however, were soft on top, and 
sometimes we slipped and fell down between them 
into the mud. Several of the birds in their fright 
had been unable to rise, and were struggling in 
among the nests, and there I caught my bird; I 
grabbed him before he could rise. And eggs ? 
Almost every nest had one or two, and the num- 
ber of nests I could n't begin to count. There were 
thousands of 'em, filling that entire point of 
land, another point near at hand, and extending 
along shore. They were built right on a mud flat 
at the edge of the water, so that the tide, when 
high, probably rose among them and they were 
almost surrounded. Some of the mounds were 
only two feet high, — others, three and four; but 
all looked something like old-fashioned churns, 
but scooped out at the top, just enough to hold 
the eggs. Some of the nests had just been made, 
and the eggs had been pressed into the mud, 
while other eggs had rolled off into the mud and 
water ; so I think the young flamingoes must 
have a rather hard time of it." 

" How do they make their nests? " asked one 
of the boys. 

" Well," replied the captain, " my friend some- 
time before had watched the birds building their 
nests, and he said that the holes we saw by the sides 
of many nests were places from which the birds had 
taken mud in their beaks, and gradually piled it 
up, the idea being to make a column, so that the 
eggs will be high above the water. As they build 
them, the sun hardens the marl and makes the 
rest nearly as hard as stone. Some of the nests we 
saw had been built the year before, and we could 
see where the birds had mended them in places." 



" If they were four feet high a bird could n't sit 
with its legs hanging over," suggested one of the 
listeners. 

"That 's just the point I wanted to tell you 
about," said the captain. "The picture-books all 
show the nest with the bird upon it, with its long 
legs on the ground; but that 's a mistake, as we 
saw them sitting on the nests, and they had their 
feet doubled up under them like any bird. 

"By the time we had found out how to travel 
over those monuments, or the 'city on stilts,' as the 
lad called it, the birds were well out of the way, 
and we examined the rookery at cur leisure. The 
more we looked, the more wonderful it seemed. 
Just imagine, if you can," said Captain Sam, 
"two thousand or more mounds of mud of all 
sizes, looking like churns, small at the top and 
increasin' in size to the bottom, packed in to- 
gether, and every one holdin' one of those beau- 
tiful red, black, and white colored birds. And when 
they rose, the birds seemed to move away like 
wheels revolvin' in the air. 

"They 're funny fellows, I can tell you," the 
captain went on. " I met a man down the coast 
who told me that once when he was huntin' 
on the Florida low-lands he came upon a whole 
colony of flamingoes among the mangrove trees. 
He watched their antics for some time — some 
standin' on one leg, some with their long necks 
in all sorts of curious positions, some stalking up 
and down as solemn as parsons — and he thought 
it would n't be a bad idea to play a joke on 
them. 

; ' So he took a fish-line, and when the birds flew 
away he fastened one end of the line to the root 
of a tree and climbed with the other end up into 
another tree. 

" Before long the birds came back, and then the 
fun began. As soon as one or two stepped 
across the line, the man in the tree gave it a pull, 
and the flamingoes began hoppin' and trippin' 
and dancin' about, now fallin' down, now jumpin' 
across and really seemin' to enjoy it immensely. 
He actually had 'em all a-skippin' rope and there 's 
no tellin' how long they 'd 'a' kept it up if it had n't 
been so very funny that my friend could n't help 
laughin' out loud; that frightened them off. 
That may seem a rather brisk story," said Cap- 
tain Sam; "but, from what I 've seen of my 
specimen, I fully believe it. 

"I tried to bring away a nest for him, as some of 
them were overturned, but it was too difficult, and 
we were a long way from home. My flamingo was 
not hurt, and I took him aboard and fastened him 
to the riggin', and in a short time he became per- 
fectly tame, and now demands more attention than 
I have time to give him. He has all sorts of 



i886.] 



IN A FLAMINGO ROOKERY. 



57 



curious tricks; curls his neck about mine, which The truth is, he 's got too much top hamper and 

I suppose is the flamingo way of putting an arm wants re-rigginV 

around my neck, then he will put his head into my Here the tall bird fell off of his box ; and as the 




MAKING FLAMINGOES JUMP THE ROPE. (SEE PRECEDING PAGE.) 



pocket and nibble my hands. In fact, he is a very captain picked his pet up, he said, "Now that 
sociable fellow; but he has a hard time in a gale we 've righted him, suppose we go and look at 
of wind, and does n't seem to get his sea legs, your curiosities." 



58 



MOLLY S POETRY. 



[November, 




ilil 



S^,,^e^^^^^^ ; ^^^^S. 



■X'ili: 



IjJ0^^^M^^^.^--£0^ 



:hA H. 



MOLLY'S POETRY. 

By Walter Learned. 



The heiress was arranging her collection of 
post-marks, her mother was mending a hole which 
a sharp stick " all by itself" had poked in a small 
dress, and I was trying to find where 1 had left off 
in a recent novel, and wondering if it would make 
much difference if I were to lose a few pages. 
Presently the heiress began to say, rather softly : 

"To him who, in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language." 

As the heiress is only about half-past nine years 
old, this was n't the sort of soliloquy that I expected, 
and I asked her, 

" What 's that, Molly ? " 

"That 's poetry, Papa," she replied. 

" Do you know any more of it? " I asked. 

" Some," she said ; and with a little prompting 
she repeated twenty lines or so. 

" Where in the world did you learn that ? " I said. 

" Up at school," she answered. " That 's 
' Thanatopsis,' Papa." 

" They have n't been teaching it to you ? " I said, 
feeling rather doubtful about the expediency of fill- 
ing the juvenile mind with 

" Sad images 
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall." 

" No," she said. " They did n't teach it to me. 
but Addic Palmer 's been learning it and I heard 
her recite it." 

" How do you like it ? " I asked. 



" Well," said the heiress, assuming a medita- 
tive attitude with her chin on her hand, " I think 
it 's rather sad. I believe I '11 write some poetry, 
Papa, and the very first thing I write will be a 
cheerful ' Thanatopsis.' " 

In pursuance of this resolution the heiress 
seated herself in her chair at the table on the fol- 
lowing evening, and, having instructed her mother 
and me that we were to sit very still and not talk, 
she began her poem. 

It was a great labor. She sighed, bit her pen- 
cil, remarked that thinking was very hard work, 
and had to have her pencil sharpened once when 
she had borne down too hard on it. But at last 
she handed over the completed poem, with the re- 
mark that she meant to write three verses, but it 
was such hard work that she thought that one 
would do. 

" Would you publish it, Papa ? " she asketl. 

" Molly," said I, " I usually leave that question 
to an editor." 



A CHEERFUL "THANATOPSIS." 

By Mary Carleton Learned. 

Dear little snowdrops, deep under the snow, 
You must be weary of winter, I know. 
Sweet little snowdrops, far down in the ground, 
You will be kissed and caressed when you 're 
found. 














ST. NICHOLAS DOG STORIES. 



59 



ST. NICHOLAS DOG STORIES. 



XX CvESAR, A DOG OF SPAIN. 

(An Adaptation from the Spanish of Cervantes.) 

By Mrs. J. A. Hoxie. 

There was in a great city in Spain a large 
slaughter-house where some butchers were hired 
to kill all the meat for the people in the city. One 
of these butchers was named Nicholas, and he was 



butchers, however, stole a great deal of the meat. 
They killed the cattle in the night, and when they 
cut up the meat they would lay aside many nice 
pieces, and before daylight their wives' or their 
friends' little servant-girls would come, crowds 
of them, with bags and baskets to get what the 
butchers had stolen for them and carry it off to 
their homes before the sun rose. The reason 
Nicholas taught his dog to carry the basket was to 




CESAR HAS TO RUN FOR HIS LIFE. (SEE NEXT PAGE) 



not a good man at all. He owned some puppies, 
and as they grew up he taught them to catch 
the cattle for the butchers and to hold them by 
the ears so they could be killed. That was all 
the work the dogs had to do. and they had plenty 
of meat to eat, so they grew large and strong. One 
of these dogs Nicholas taught to carry a great bas- 
ket. The dog would take the handle in his teeth 
and walk carefully, and let nobody touch the bas- 
ket till he got to the place where he had been told 
to go ; then he would wag his tail politely, while 
the meat was taken out, and would then carry 
home the empty basket. 

Now Caesar — for that was his name — was a good 
dog. and he saw a great deal that was wrong going 
on among the butchers ; but then he thought, 
"My business is to mind my master." The 



save his wife and his friends the trouble of send- 
ing their servants for it. So one morning just 
about daylight Nicholas gave Caesar the big bas- 
ket and told the dog to take it to his wife. 
Caesar set off, very steadily and carefully, but on 
the way an old man (to whose house he used often 
to carry meat) looked out of an upper window and 
called him in a kind and gentle tone. Of course 
he stopped. And the man came down to the door 
and called him in, and petted and praised him and 
talked to him and made him very happy. But 
then he took all the meat out of the basket and 
put one of his old shoes into it and covered it up 
and said, "Go back to old Nicholas and tell him I 
wish never to deal with him again." 

Of course, the dog could not tell the message, but 
Nicholas when he saw the old shoe in the basket 



6o 



ST. NICHOLAS DOG STORIES. 



[November, 



was in a fury, and he snatched his knife to kill 
Caesar; but the dog ran for his life. He ran all 
day long as fast as he could go, — far — far beyond 
the great city, out through the country, and up 
among the hills ; and when it grew dark he was so 
tired and so hungry ! " At any rate," he thought, 
"Nicholas can't catch me here," and he lay down 
and went sound asleep. 

When it grew daylight, he found there was a 
large flock of sheep sleeping near him. "Ah," 
he thought, " this is fine ! I always thought it was 
good work for a dog to take care of sheep — let 
me see if I can't persuade the shepherd to have me 
for his dog." Just then the shepherds came, 



The shepherd took off his hat and said, "He is 
a stray dog : he does not belong to any one around 
here ; but he has all the marks of a good breed, 
and will make a fine dog." 

"Then give him the collar of the dog that died 
last week and keep him," said the master. " Make 
much of him: a petted dog will love the flock." 
And off he rode. 

The shepherd brought out a collar that was all 
set with iron spikes, and he put a lot of bread and 
milk into a wooden trough for Caesar's breakfast. 
Then they followed where the flocks had spread and 
scattered themselves upon the hills to feed. The 
dog thought, " This will be a pleasant life for me; 




'ONE OF THE SHEPHERDS CALLED TO CESAR. 



stretching themselves, out of a little hut near by. 
and one of them called to Caesar. He went 
quietly, wagging his tail and licking the shep- 
herd's shoes, as much as to say, "Do let me stay 
with you ! " The man looked at his teeth to see 
how old he was, and patted him. Just then up rode 
the owner of the flocks. He did not look like a 
shepherd ; he rode a good horse and was hand- 
somely dressed ; he wore pistols and a dagger, and 
had a gun in his hand. He ordered the shepherds 
about, and they were very humble. 
"Whose dog is that?" said he. 



shepherds are good, gay, happy people, and I 
shall be as good as a dog can be." For when he 
used to go to the pretty lady who had sent the 
message to Nicholas, he often had to wait there, 
and he had heard her reading in some of her books 
to her companions what a pleasant life it was to be 
a shepherd or a shepherdess ; how the shepherds 
sat under shady groves, by the side of the pleasant 
brooks and rivers, and played sweet music on their 
flutes and guitars, and sang all sorts of beautiful 
songs, and danced with the pretty shepherdesses; 
while their faithful dogs now and then ran all 



1 886.] 



ST. NICHOLAS DOG STORIES. 



61 



around the sheep to make sure that they were safe, 
and then came back to listen to the music. But 
Caesar soon found that that was the way shepherds 
do in story-books, but not in reality ; at least, those 
shepherds were very different. They were dirty and 
stupid, they slept in the sunshine, or, if the wind 
blew, under the shelter of a rock. Sometimes 
they mended their old shoes. And, as to the music 
— all they ever played was an ugly noise, made by 
clattering two sticks together ; and their singing 
was all one sound, over and over, — no words, only 
"dum, dum, dum," or "do, do, do"; a dog could 
howl better music. 

Only one thing was true as told in the story — 
the dogs took care of the flock ; and that Caesar 
did, night and day. Wherever the sheep went over 
the mountains, he was constantly racing around 
them, that no wolf should ever get a chance 
to steal even one poor little lamb. The rough 
rocks made his poor paws sore sometimes, he ran 
on them so fast and so much ; and oh ! he got so 
tired! And what were soaked bread and milk — 
mostly milk too — for food, when his work was so 
hard? He was hungry all the time — dreadfully 
hungry. And yet, with all his faithful watching, 
when the master came to see how the sheep were 
getting on, the shepherds would always bring 
parts of torn sheep and say, "The wolves have 
had so many." And then the master would scold 
and say, " Beat the dogs," and the shepherds 
would beat them, and Caesar would think, "This 
is a puzzle ! When did the wolves get at those poor 
sheep?" But one day he found out the puzzle. 
He saw a smoke rising among some rocks, and 
there he spied those wicked shepherds. They 
had killed some sheep and were, having a fine 
dinner together; then they took what was left and 
tore it, and rubbed it on the rocks, s»as to make it 
look as if the wolves had bitten it ! They were the 
wolves themselves, and dishonest men, and they 
had beaten the poor dogs for what they themselves 
had done ! Caesar thought, "I '11 work no more 
for these bad masters ! " and so he ran away again, 
down from the hills and through the country to 
another city. There he walked about awhile, half 
starved, trying to find a home to suit him. At last 
he saw a very nice large house ; and the owner of 
it, who looked like a rich merchant, came out of 
the door ; so he went toward the gentleman, and 
wagged his tail and tried to make friends; and 
the gentleman called to one of his servants and 
said : "Here 's a fine dog, and I know by his eyes 
that he is an honest one. He seems to have lost 
his master and to want another. He 's thin enough, 
poor fellow ; take him in and feed him — he '11 make 
us a good watch- dog. " 

"Ah ! " thought the dog, "there's nothing like a 



gentleman ! How kind he is ! Indeed I will be a 
good watch-dog for them ! " 

The servants fed him, and they showed hiin 
behind the front door a little mat to lie upon. 
What had become of his spiked collar I don't 
know — I suppose it had been worn out, for they 
put a very handsome one on him with a chain to 
it, and they showed him who belonged to the 
family, or were good friends that often went in and 
out — to them he was to wag his tail. If strangers 
came to the door, he was to growl, — if any bad- 
looking people, to bark with all his might. At 
night they unchained him and let him out-of- 
doors. He could now get some exercise and fresh 
air ; but he must go around the outside of the 
house and the stables and sheds, and the garden 
that was behind the house, and watch everything 
carefully all night ; and that he gladly did for 
so kind a master. His master had two sons who 
went to school everyday; and a servant walked 
before them to carry their books and a satchel 
with their luncheon in it. Now you know Nicho- 
las had taught Caesar to carry things, and he 
wished to carry the satchel, instead of the serv- 
ant ; so when the boys were getting ready for 
school one day, he took hold of the handle with 
his teeth, and when the servant wanted to take 
it from him, he growled, and went in front of them 
and wagged his tail to them. They understood 
what he wanted, and said, " Caesar wants to go 
to school with us ; unchain him and see if he 
wont carry the knapsack as well as a man." 

Now he was a happy dog. Every day he walked 
on in front till they came to the school-house. 
The other scholars would try to make him give 
them the satchel; but he would not let them have 
it. He carried it gravely and properly to the 
janitor, who took care of all the scholars' bags, 
then went back out of the school-room and sat just 
outside the door, straight, like a man, looking 
directly at the teacher who was talking to the 
scholars or hearing their lessons. He thought 
it was fine to have a chance to get an educa- 
tion. At noon the boys all played with him, 
and gave him part of their dinners. They all 
liked him very much, he was so big and so good- 
natured ; and when they went home at night, then 
he kept watch again at his master's door. But the 
teachers gave the boys lessons to learn at noon, 
and, though he was quiet, he interfered with their 
studies, for the lads would not let him alone. It 
was such fun for them to have him for a play- 
mate, — but every afternoon the lessons were not 
properly learned. So his young masters said, 
" We must not let Caesar go to school with us any 
more. He is a good dog. but the boys will not sit 
down and study while we have him there." 



62 



ST. NICHOLAS DOG STORIES. 



[November, 



Poor Ceesar ! how sad he felt when they went 
away and left him chained at home ! and it was very 
tedious lying in one place all the time, and not 
having any more education. Then he had a new 
trouble. There was a cook, who, after dinner, 
used to bring a plate of bones for him and for 
two great cats that lived at the same house. 



master would not allow the door to be opened at 
night. So he watched sharply. He thought, "If 
they steal the least thing, I '11 bark with all my 
might." But they did not steal anything, and the 
cook brought him such good feasts! At last he 
thought what he would do. He would not bite the 
cook, of course. He would be a strange watch-dog 












s 4< 





'THERE WAS A GREAT WALL AROUND THE TOWN WITH GATES THAT WERE FASTENED AT NIGHT. 



But as Caesar could not go any farther than 
the length of his chain, they would generally get 
more than their share, and he had too good 
manners to make a noise or quarrel with them, 
and so he really did not have enough. He sighed 
when he remembered what quantities of nice white 
bread cakes the scholars used to feed him. 

Now, this same cook used to sleep in the kitchen, 
and he had a friend who worked in the stables 
and slept in the courtyard outside the front 
door. When everybody, except Caesar, was 
asleep, he would come softly and bring him some 
more dinner, and pat him so kindly, and unlock 
and open the big door and let in his friend, and 
the two would talk together in a whisper for a long 
time. Then the friend would go out, and the cook 
would lock the door, and go back to the kitchen be- 
fore any one waked up. So now Caesar had enough 
to eat again, but he was not happy; for he knew his 



to bite one of the household; but he decided he 
must stop the cook's bad ways. So the next time 
the cook came slyly creeping along with his plate 
of meat, Caesar caught hold of his clothes and tore 
them, and scratched the cook's legs with his 
claws. He did not make the least noise, nor did 
his victim dare to. For a whole week afterward, 
the door was not opened, and Caesar thought he 
had cured the cook of his naughtiness — but no; he 
got some more clothes, and brought the dog food 
again, but kept out of his reach and opened the 
door as before. Then Caesar lay on his mat and 
thought and thought, " What ought I to do? My 
master thinks I shall do what is right — and what 
is right? If 1 bark and rouse the house, the serv- 
ants will be punished, and I shall have no more 
treats. They really don't do any harm, they only 
talk together, but at the same time I know my 
master trusts me to guard that door, and he would 



ST. NICHOLAS DOG STORIES. 



63 



not let them open it at night. I don't know what 
I ought to do. It is too hard a question for me. I 
must run away and find a new master." So the 
next time he was let out for a run, he ran indeed, 
out of the city and far off to another large town, 
where he made friends with some policemen, and 
soon gained one of them for his master. They 
found him very useful. 

He went about the streets with them at night, 
and if they saw any one stealing they would point, 
and Caesar would run far quicker than they could, 
and catch the rascal and hold him till they came 
up to put him in prison. He did not like the work 
very well; though he staid there a long while, and 
was as good as any policeman of them all. 

One night his master was not there, but the 
others were going out to patrol the streets and 
they called him to go too ; so he went. There was 
a great wall around the town with gates that 
were fastened at night ; but there was a hole in 
this wall, where some stones had fallen out, as 
Caesar had noticed, and there was a church in 
that part of the town. They saw a man slinking 
out of the church, and sneaking along as if he 
had been stealing. 

"A thief ! " the men said, and set Caesar on him. 

He rushed down the street and seized the man — 
and it was his own master ! 

He was so ashamed and frightened that he let go 
and ran out of the hole in the wall and raced off 
fifty miles before he stopped to rest. Then he hid 
in a wood and slept and rested himself. Then he 
trotted along till he came to a town where there 
was a great crowd. There were troops of soldiers 
marching through the town. They had flags fly- 
ing, and music ; and he saw a man drumming 
whom he had seen, before — so he walked along 
beside the drummer, who remembered him and 
said, "Caesar, poor fellow, how came you here? 
Do you want to go to be a soldier? " And he said 
to his companions that here was a bright dog, 
that would make fun for them when they had 
nothing to do. For this happened at a time when 
there was no fighting going on. 

The drummer was a good-natured master to 
Caesar and fed him well. He taught him many 
droll tricks, and he taught him to stand upon his 
hind legs and dance, and keep time to the music ; 
and the men all said they never saw a dog dance 
so nicely. His master had some very pretty clothes 
made for him, and when they came into a town 
where they were to stay all night, he would go 
out with his drum and call through the streets: 
" If any wish to see the Wonderful Learned Dog, 
let them come to such a place at seven o'clock." 
And people would come to see Caesar's pranks 
and his dancing, and pay money at the door : 



so his master thought a great deal of him, and 
he was very busy and contented. He did n't 
like it as well as going to school, but it did very 
well. At last they came to a town where his 
master hired a large room, and there was a great 
crowd to see the Learned Dog, and all were 
astonished to see how he understood and did 
everything his master told him. Then up got 
somebody and said, "That is not a dog, for no 
dog can do such things ! It is just a boy dressed 
up like a dog, — and it is a great shame to call a 
boy a dog, and it ought to be stopped." 

Then some others said, ' ' Yes ! yes ! put the man 



in prison ! 



Still others screamed out, " Let the 



fine old doggie dance ! We have paid our money 
to see him — dogs know as much as boys!" and 
so they scolded and angered one another and soon 
began to fight. "Police! police!" some people 
shouted; then all began to run. And what became 
of Caesar's master? Caesar did not stop to see, 
but he, too, ran off as fast as he could, and wriggled 
off his clothes and left them in the street. 

Then, aftermore wandering, he took a poet for his 
master, and he liked him very much. He was gentle 
and kind, and his friends were all polite gentlemen, 
so Caesar was in good company. But he soon found 
his master had nothing to eat for himself half the 
time, so he thought, " My master would be better 
off without me, though he is too kind to say so." 
And as he walked about the town, thinking whether 
to run away again or not, he took notice of a large 
hospital where many sick people were nursed and 
taken care of. The good brethren that lived 
there went out through the town to bring in sick 
people or anybody that was in distress, so Caesar 
made friends with them and carried things for 
them, and, when the nights were dark, walked 
ahead with a large lantern, and he did not have to 
run away any more, for he was almost as good and 
kind as his new masters, and many a poor fellow 
who had been hurt or fallen ill rejoiced to see him 
coming with his lantern. And now he was well 
fed — with nice white meat, and bread and every- 
thing that he liked ; and so he had a good home 
at last, and no more troubles. 

XXL — TWO A'EXETIAN DOGS. 

By Katharine Broxson. 

Some years ago, while wintering in Venice, a 
friend, who knew my fondness for pets, brought me 
two dear little doggies. One of them I decided to 
keep as my own ; but I gave the other to a young 
friend who was living with me. They seemed so 
happy together that we gave them the names of 
Placido and Contenta. which are the Italian words 



6 4 



ST. NICHOLAS DOG STORIES. 



[November, 



for "peaceful" and "contented," and we found 
great pleasure in feeding and caressing them. They 
enjoyed each other's society for a month or more, 
but when the mistress of Placido was obliged to re- 
turn to her home, she found that it was not possible 
to take with her the new-found and dearly-prized 



and in the sunlight their coats shine like beaten 
gold. They have small heads and fine narrow 
muzzles, with ears and tails cut short like those of a 
terrier. In shape they are somewhat like tiny Spitz 
or Pomeranian dogs. Their hair is soft as floss- 
silk, and their large dark eyes are as tender and lov- 




pet. So she sorrowfully resigned it into the hands 
of a young officer in the Italian navy. A collar of 
silver with mysterious inscriptions upon it was fas- 
tened around Placido's neck, and a paper in imita- 
tion of a legal document was drawn up, transferring 
this precious object from one owner to the other. 

Now these little dogs are unlike any that Ameri- 
can children ever see. They are a deep yellow color, 



ing as those of a gazelle. Placido grew to be much 
larger and stronger than his sister, though there is 
still a family likeness between them. His life at first 
was chiefly passed with his new owner in the arsenal, 
but when the latter received orders for a two- 
years' cruise in the /Egean Sea, Placido was taken 
to Genoa, where he lived in a luxurious though 
somewhat monotonous manner during his master's 



iS86.] 



ST. NICHOLAS DOG STORIES. 



65 



absence. lean not easily describe the development 
of Placido's intelligence; but I can assure you that 
his little sister grew daily in beauty and cleverness, 
though not in size. If she was taken to walk on the 
riva, which is to the water-streets of Venice what 
a sidewalk is to the avenues of other towns, she 
would constantly leave the servant's side, to seek 
in all the gondolas for her mistress, and would each 
time return disappointed. Though her gentle man- 
ner and sensitive temperament seemed to indicate 
timidity, she would encounter with absolute fear- 
lessness the wild and lawless cats that make their 
home among the arches of the Ducal Palace. One 
day a savage creature flew at her and tore her face 
until the blood flowed freely ; but Contenta was 
undaunted. 

Indeed, far from being frightened at the feline 
race, she was always restless at a certain hour of 
the evening, when she considered it necessary to 
go to the kitchen to " put the cats to bed." This 
operation consisted in barking violently at the 
household mouse-catchers, until they flew before 
her in terror and took refuge in the garret. Then 
Contenta returned to the drawing-room with the air 
of saying, "Behold me, once more I have done my 
duty ! " And this feat was the more remarkable 
since she was smaller than the cats. 

She frequently sat alone in a room for hours, 
patiently waiting for mice ; but I regret to say that 
she destroyed her own chances by barking when 
they made a noise in the wall. In spite of this, how- 
ever, she often caught them as they ran across the 
room, and she then seemed perfectly overjoyed 
at her own prowess. On one occasion, so I have 
heen assured, Contenta seized, worried, and killed 
a large rat in the courtyard ; but as I was not 
myself a witness to that deed of daring, I can 
not, of course, give it as an actual fact in this 
faithful history. But I can narrate an incident which 
is much more remarkable, and which I know to be 
perfectly true. We were about to start on a jour- 
ney — the halls were filled with trunks, and all was 
ready for departure, when to our surprise we saw 
Contenta busily engaged, as we thought, in up- 
rooting the plants from the large flower-pots of the 
front balcony. On investigation, we found that she 
had drawn forth from their hiding-places numer- 
ous bones which she had concealed from time to 
time in the earth. She nibbled a little at the most 
savory among them, and then appeared quite 
ready to leave home, with no care upon her mind. 

At this time, 1 am sorry to say, she began to 
treat me with caprice, and seemed to transfer her 
affections to our traveling-servant. His voice was 
more quickly obeyed than was mine, and Contenta 
evidently preferred his society to that of any one 
else. This strange freak was so annoying to me 
VOL. XIV. — 5. 



that I determined to get another dog ; accord- 
ingly, in Florence, I took to my affections a new 
pet — a tiny white terrier of Maltese ancestry. He 
was smaller than anything 1 had then seen in 
the dog-world, and was consequently very delicate. 
He sat on my shoulder and never left me by day 
or night. After his arrival, Contenta seemed sad 
but consoled herself with the servants. 

When we returned to Venice in the month of 
October, the demon of jealousy seemed roused 
at last in the capricious breast of Contenta. She 
visibly pined and seemed to wish to return to me, 
but I was obdurate, as the fragile Lino quite ab- 
sorbed my care and attention. One fatal day I 
went out in the gondola to sketch ; the boat was 
attached to a buoy, I was busy with my work, and 
the little Florentine played about the prow of the 
boat. Suddenly I heard a gentle splash in the 
water, and looking up, I saw my Lino carried rap- 
idly down by the tide. To loosen the gondola and 




strive to save him was the work of a moment. He 
was swept by the current within reach of some 
workmen who were caulking a ship's sides, and 
one of them seized the poor little dog and gave 
him to me. He was so small that one might have 
thought him a little drowned kitten. Once at 
home, we tried all possible restoratives, but that 



66 



A LITTLE CAPTIVE. 



[November, 



cold bath was too much for so frail a body, and 
within three days he panted his tiny life away. 
He was buried under the oleanders in the court- 
yard, and on his small white marble tombstone 
are these words in golden letters : 



Born in the Tuscan fields 

With the violets of the year; 
Dead by the sad sea wave 

Ere yet those fields were sere. 

Lightly may earth and flower 

Lie on his gentle breast; 
Nor wind nor wintry shower 

Disturb my Lino's rest. 

After Lino's death, Contenta returned to her 
devotion to me, and remained loyal and faithful. 

Clever dogs are possessed of wonderful mem- 
ories. Placido, on his return to Venice after a two- 
years' absence, remembered the street on which 
his sister lived, and ran away from his master to 



greet her and all the household with violent dem- 
onstrations of joy. 

I am sure, too, that Contenta knew whenever she 
approached her old home ; for after long journeys 
in many lands, by rail and steamer and carriage, 
during which time she slept peacefully and was a 
most exemplary traveler, the moment she heard the 
call "Venezia /" she would become restless, never 
ceasing to look out at the windows of the railway 
carriage, and never sleeping a moment during the 
last four or six hours of the journey. 

She was a born smuggler, and when her ticket 
had not been taken, she was quite aware that she 
ought not to be seen by the railway officials. The 
moment the train slackened speed, she would creep 
into a place of concealment where she would re- 
main motionless until the five or ten minutes at 
the station were past, and would emerge from 
hiding only when the train was again fairly in 
motion. 



A LITTLE CAPTIVE. 



By Mary L. B. Branch. 



Some one has prisoned in a cage 

A little chipmunk with black eyes ; 
Sometimes he gnaws the wires in rage, 
Sometimes in weary dullness lies. 
It 's clear to me, he longs to be 

Over the stone wall leaping, 
Up the tall tree, nimble and free, 
Or in its hollow sleeping. 



His captor looks at him each morn, 

But has no loving word to say. 
Brings him some water and some corn, 
And then forgets him" all the day. 

Poor little thing ! who fain would bring 

Nuts from the great trees yonder, 
Drink water from some hill-side spring. 
And freely, wildly wander. 



He has a soft bright coat of brown 

With pretty stripes of darker hue, 
In the woods scampering up and down, 
With merry mates he throve and grew. 
And oh ! and oh ! he longs to go 

Back to the forest flying — 
He has a nest, for aught I know, 
Where little ones are crying. 



Pent in a narrow wire-walled box, 

He pines in vain, no joy he takes; 
The moss, the leaves, the woods, the rocks, 
For these his little sad heart aches. 
My word I plight that I to-night 

Will wake, while some are sleeping, 
And to the woods by bright moonlight 
The chipmunk shall go leaping ! 



i886.] 



THE BROWNIES IN THE GYMNASIUM, 



6 7 



THE BROWNIES IN THE GYMNASIUM. 

liv Palmer Cox. 



The Brownies once, while roaming 'round. 

By chance approached a college ground ; 

And, as they skirmished every side, 

A large gymnasium they espied. 

Their eyes grew bright as they surveyed 

The means for exercise displayed. 

The club, the weight, the hanging ring, 

The horizontal bar, and swing, 

All brought expressions of delight, 

As one by one they came in sight. 

The time was short, and words <x, 

w 
That named the work for each 

to do. 
Their mystic art, as may be 

found 




On pages now in volumes bound, 
Was quite enough to bear them in 
Through walls of wood and roofs of tin. 
No hasp can hold, no bolt can stand 
Before the Brownie's tiny hand; 



The sash will rise, the panel yield, 
And leave him master of the field. 

When safe they stood within the hall, 
A pleasant time was promised all. 



68 



THE BROWNIES IN THE GYMNASIUM. 



[November, 



Though not the largest in the band. 
I claim to own no infant hand ; 
And muscle in this arm you '11 meet 
That well might grace a trained athlete. 
Two goats once blocked a mountain pass, 
Contending o'er a tuft of grass. 
Important messages of state 
Forbade me there to stand and wait ; 
Without a pause, the pair I neared 
And seized the larger by the beard ; 
I dragged him from his panting foe 
And hurled him to the plain below." 

" For clubs," a second answered there, 
" Or heavy weights I little care ; 
But give me bar or give me ring, 
Where I can turn, contort, and swing 
And I '11 outdo, with movements fine, 
The monkey on his tropic vine." 




Said one, " The clubs let me obtain 
That Indians use upon the plain, 
And here I '11 stand to test my power, 
And swing them 'round my head an hour; 



Thus skill and strength and wind they tried 
By means they found on every side. 
Some claimed at once the high trapeze, 
And there performed with grace and ease ; 



i886.J 



THE BROWNIES IN THE GYMNASIUM. 



69 



They turned and tumbled left and right, 
As though they held existence light. 



Their coats from tail to collar rent 

Showed some through trying treatment went, 

And more, with usage much the same, 

Had scarce a button to their name. 

The judge selected for the case 

Ran here and there about the place 

With warning cries and gesture wide, 

And seemed unable to decide. 

And there they might be tugging still, 

With equal strength and equal will — 




At times a finger-tip was all 
Between them and a fearful fall. 
On strength of toes they now depend, 
Or now on coat-tails of a friend — 
And had that cloth been less than best 
That looms could furnish, cast or west, 
Some members of the Brownie race 
Might now be missing from their place. 
But fear, we know, scarce ever finds 
A home within their active minds. 
And little danger they could see 
In what would trouble you or me. 
Some stood to prove their muscle strong, 
And swung the clubs both large and long 
That men who met to practice there 
Had often found no light affair. 

They found a rope, as 'round they ran, 
And then a " tug-of-war " began ; 
First over benches, stools, and chairs, 
Then up and down the winding stairs. 
They pulled and hauled and tugged around 
Now giving up, now gaining ground ; 
Some lost their footing at the go, 
And on their backs slid to and fro 
Without a chance their state to mend 
Until the contest found an end. 



But while they struggled, stars withdrew 
And hints of morning broader grew, 
Till arrows from the rising sun 
Soon made them drop the rope and run. 



?o 



J A C K - I X - T II E - P U L P I T . 











£i!3JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT. 



Good-day, my friends ! much obliged to you 
for assembling here this fine morning, when the 
hickory-nuts and walnuts are dropping over yonder, 
and the squirrels are too busy to come and chatter 
their pretty nonsense to me. Now we '11 proceed 
to take up — no, no; not a collection, but anew 
subject, 

DO BIRDS NEVER FLY DOWN? 

Dear Jack-IN-THE-Pulpit : Can you or the 
Little School-ma'am, or your friend Mr. Holder, 
answer us an important question about birds? It 
is this : We two live next door to each other, in 
the country, and since we 've known you we have 
grown very fond of noticing things like the habits 
of animals. Well, among other points, we 've 
noticed that the birds we have watched flying up 
into the air have one way of going up, and another 
of coming down. They evidently move their wings 
in mounting, but, in their descent, they seem lo 
us to just fall gracefully through the air, simply 
using their outspread wings to balance them and 
to regulate their speed. Are we right? When 
birds are wounded, you know, they have no power 
to hold out their wings properly, and so they have 
to tumble, poor things ! but when they have their 
senses, they can drop down gently from the far 
sky and slant themselves in just the right way. 
We watched, too, the fowls in the poultry-yard 
come down from high roosting-places, and though 
they made a good deal of noise and fuss with their 
wings, it seemed to us it was not because they were 
trying to fly down with their clipped wings, but 
that they were trying to balance themselves. We 
may be wrong (we almost always are, my brother 
says), but that is our opinion. 

This letter is composed by us both, and is a 
true account of our observations, and we would 



like to have it answered, if you will show it to your 
hearers, dear Jack. Your young friends, 

Henriette and May. 

a simple question. 

Why is it very hard for a goat to be good ? 

This question was asked during the noon recess 
at the little red school-house yesterday. The boy 
who asked it is quite a funny boy, so everybody 
tried to give a lively answer. 

"Because he 's too hard-headed," shouted one. 

"Because he wont mind his ma," ventured 
another. 

" Becauth he dothent know how," lisped a pretty 
little fellow with yellow curls. 

" Because he gives too many buts," said the dear 
Little School-ma'am, glancing brightly at certain 
scholars who are fond of making excuses. 

"Because people are never extra good to him," 
answered a tall boy rather sheepishly. 

" I don't know about that," put in a chubby little 
maid. " Some people are very good to ammamuls." 

" All wrong ! " cried the funny boy. " Do you 
give it up? Why is it very hard for a goat to be 
good? I made it up my own self. Do you want 
to know ?" 

"Yes, yes. Tell us!" cried one and all. 

'■ Well," said the funny boy very gravely, "it 's 
because he was born a little wee-kid." 

The next thing I knew, the entire school was 
chasing that boy. 

A NEW MORAL TO AN OLD FABLE. 

Deacon Green received a letter not long ago 
from a crony of his, who wrote that he had come 
across a new moral to an old fable. And the 
Deacon read it to his young friend, Tom Walker, 
as they met near my pulpit the other evening. 
Here it is : 

"The hare that slept till overtaken by a tortoise said, ' This comes 
from racing with an unworthy competitor. Had I been matched 
with a fox, I should have won.' " 

" Well," said the Deacon slowly, as he closed 
the letter, "that 's the hare's side of the case, I 
suppose. But 1 've noticed — have n't you? — 
that folks who lose in contests are very apt to try 
to comfort themselves with a good excuse. Be- 
sides, can we admit in advance that he would 
have won in a race with the fox? The fox is a 
very clever and unscrupulous fellow. Now, it 
would be just like the fox to try to trick the hare 
into taking a nap somewhere along the course — 
and, ten to one, the hare would be silly enough to 
be tricked ! " 

" Yes, sir," said Tom smiling, " the hare does n't 
seem to be fully awake even yet. If, after all these 
years, the moral you 've just read is the best 
reason lie is able to give for losing that race — why, 
he 'd better let the tortoise explain it ! " 

" But pray don't let the tortoise hear you say 
that ! " rejoined the Deacon. " His account of it 
would be as slow as his pace. Nevertheless, for 
my own part, I 've always admired the good, 



J A C K - I N - T II E - P U L P I T . 



71 



honest, steady work done by the tortoise on that 
occasion." 

"Right you are, sir!" exclaimed Tom. "It 
was the tortoise, not the hare, that had the ' walk 
over,' as we boys say ; but he had to walk over 
every inch of it." 

Tom is a good fellow, and has a habit of winning 
running- matches himself, though he 's no tortoise, 



you may be sure, 
who go through 
runner," which, 
extraordinary. 



In fact, according 
my meadow, he 's 
I suppose, means 



to the boys 
a "sprint 
something 



A COCOA-NUT PRISON. 

the West Indies, there lives a mouse who 
cocoa-nuts. So up the tree he runs, and, 



IN 
likes 

selecting a fine soft nut, nimbly gnaws a little hole 
and then in he goes. Now he is in fine quarters. He 
has plenty to eat and drink, and a very good place 
for little naps. He improves his opportunities and 
eats and eats ; and as cocoa-nut milk fattens mice, 
he soon grows to a fine large size. After a time he 
decides to come out, but alas ! the hole seems to 
have grown a little smaller ! So he turns and 
takes a little more of the milk, — no need to go 
away hungry, you know. Well, the end of it is, 
that, either through laziness or stupidity, he never 



was the way it began. Andof course when a story 
begins in that way, something is bound to happen ! 
So it was in this case. What happened was a rat. 
And, of course, he made for the chicks ; and, of 
course, the hen (as the chicks well knew) had a 
bad temper; and so — well, as to what happened 
next, why look at the picture ! 

— And just here, by the way, I propose to arise 
in my might and protest ! For what can be more 
unjust, say I, than for an artist, who calls himself 
my friend, to send me a long rigmarole about a 
thrilling adventure of this sort, when the picture 
he sends with it tells the whole story in advance ? 
How am I to " lead up " to an exciting climax, 1 'd 
like to know, when the climax itself is illuminated 
for you before I 've said a word ? This thing must 
be stopped ! 

You see now why I had to skip so much in tell- 
ing you this story. I could n't possibly catch up 
with the picture before you saw it, and the moment 
you saw it the story was told ! 

But no ! There 's the conclusion ! You know it 
already, eh? "The rat was drowned?" do you 
say ? Not a bit of it ! And the chicks did n't all 
live happy ever after, either ! That rat outran the 
hen, leaped across the brook on some convenient 
stones, and an hour later, when the hot-tempered 




NOT THE END OF IT VET, BY ANY MEANS. 



gets out ! And when the people come to that 
tree to gather cocoa-nuts, behold there is a mouse 
in one of the very finest ! 



A FINE STORY SPOILED. 



"ONCE upon a time, a matronly hen and her 
fine brood of promising chicks were wandering 
along the pebbly shore of a limpid stream, at 
peace with themselves and all the world ! " That 



hen was in the barn trying to peck a china egg to 
pieces, Mr. Rat quietly returned and ate one of her 
chicks. — But if the artist had pictured that scene, 
I would never have consented to tell the story at all. 



WHO WOULD? 



By the way, my friends, I 've had some letters 
from you asking me to tell what I expect to see on 
Hallow-e'en night — just as if I 'd tell anybody ! 



7 2 



DOLLY S LULLABY. 



[November, 













U.^ '.*•'■ :m-- 



^^Ajy< 



fl 3 




Words by Helen Gray Cone. 
Music by Karl Klauser. 

.-i ndantino — So/tly. 



EfcE 



m 



i. Sleep, dear, sleep, dear, fold - ing eye - lids wax - en 
2. Sleep, dear, sleep, dear, round cheeks tint-ed pure-ly, 




mm 



-« 1 \-^ y h- 1 — 









H 



O - ver eyes like corn-flowers brightly blue ; Rest here, rest here, lit - tie head so flax - en ; 
Red lips gath - ered in a rose - bud pout ; Bye-bye, bye-bye, now she's dreaming sure-ly ; 



i^Bz 






-= 1 * — L — '- 



:tt=fc 



-A 1 1 — T- 

^ — a 1 



1=f 



i^=s 



is 



c=t 



L <2- 



s 



DOLLY S LULLABY. 



73 




$ — * — * — *-F— »— i — F^ — * — * — *— z \ 



Soft I'll hush you, just as moth-ers do: Dol-ly's good, she does not cry When she hears her 

How I won-der what she dreams a - bout ! Oh ! how ver - y, ver-y odd Must be Dol-ly's 




;b=ef=fJ^ 



&=?=*=*■ 



-$\ — n — ?v 



\. 



± 



In I - la - by, Oh, quite eas - i - ly she goes to sleep Yes, at an - y time of day 

Land of Nod! Ah, what happens when she goes to sleep? I sup-pose she must for - get, 






S35EKE3=B 



-1-—H — »-!■- 



3S 



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is^^^i:==l^ 






F=t 



5 



*=F 



fc * Pv 

1 1 1— 

*— 



4= 



m 0- 



V — h- 



-</ — y- 



S=g| ==ifl 



I may choose for night, in play, Oh, quite eas - i - ]y she goes to sleep. 

For she nev - cr told me yet. Pray, what happens when she goes to sleep? 



feS^EfeS 



=3=4: 






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m^m 



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sW 



74 



THE AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION. 



[November, 




THE SECOND GENERAL CONVENTION OF 
THE AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION. 

The Second National Convention of the Agassiz Association 
was held in Davenport, Iowa, August 25, 26, and 27, 1S86. Prob- 
ably no readers of St. Nicholas need to be told what this 
Association is, unless perhaps some of the younger readers, whose 
subscription to this magazine begins with the present number. All 
such will find a complete history of our organization in the files 
of St. Nicholas since November, 1880. 

Our first convention met two years ago in Philadelphia. At that 
meeting the Eastern States were largely represented, while the dis- 
tance to be traversed prevented the attendance of many delegates 
from the West. It was partly in order to accommodate our Western 
Chapters that this year's convention was appointed for Iowa. A 
stronger reason was found in the fact that the Chapters of Iowa 
have been the first to organize themselves into a State Assembly, 
called the Iowa Assembly of the Agassiz Association. By means 
of this union of forces, the Iowa Chapters were able consistently to 
assume the labor and expense of the Convention, which would have 
proved a task far too burdensome for any single Chapter. Indeed, 
the Philadelphia meeting had been rendered possible and successful 
only by a similar action on the part of the local Chapters, which, to 
the number of twenty or more, had combined to form the Philadel- 
phia Assembly. 

The officers and members of the Iowa Assembly deserve the 
highest prai.se for the energetic, self-sacrificing, and intelligent way 
in which they perfected every arrangement calculated to add to 
the interest of the convention and the comfort and pleasure of the 
delegates. Preparations were begun months in advance, and by per- 
sonal subscription and solicitation, and by fairs, lectures, and exhibi- 
tions, more than three hundred dollars was raised. Besides this, 
the city was canvassed for places at which delegates should be enter- 
tained ; the railroads were induced to grant the concession of low 
fares ; a fine hall was secured and tastefully decorated for the meet- 
ings ; and the press of the city was thoroughly informed of the history 
of the A. A. and the purposes of the convention. With the money 
raised a steamer was chartered for the excursion on the Mississippi ; 
a band of musicians was engaged to enliven the trip; a special rail- 
road train was hired to convey the delegates to Rock Island, for a 
visit to the Government Arsenal ; an elaborate banquet was prepared. 
In a word, everything was done that devotion, liberality, and hos- 
pitality could suggest. 

The General Convention opened on Wednesday, and, on the day 
before, the Iowa Assembly convened for i:s annual session. Under 
the efficient management of President E. P Boynton, this Assembly 
has already attained a remarkable growth, and shows every sign 
of strength and permanence. 1 have never attended a meeting of 
young persons conducted with more enthusiasm, interest, and dig- 
nity. There was no trilling. Every appointment was fulfilled; 
every paper was carefully prepared ; and the showing then made 
of the work done by the several Chapters during the year was so 
gratifying that it was well worth a journey of a thousand miles to 
hear the report of it. 

On Wednesday afternoon the National Convention was called to 
order by the President, at half-past two o'clock. After prayer by 
Rev, O. Clute, of Iowa City, who has long been a member and a 



warm friend of the A. A., Charles Putnam, Esq., President of the 
Davenport Academy of Sciences, delivered an eloquent address of 
welcome. 

Among his first words were these: "When the students of our 
schools and colleges voluntarily put aside the mere amusements 
which arc wont to dominate those early years, and thus journey 
from far and near to take wise counsel and engage in serious study, 
we are encouraged to look liopeful'y forward into the future for 
achievements in scientific research which shall be worthy of our race 
and age." 

The President of the A. A. responded in a few words, voicing the 
gratitude of the delegates for Iowa's kind words and deeds of wel- 
come. The first paper w-as then read by Mrs. Ferris. It was writ- 
ten by Mr, M. R. Steele, of Decorah, and its subject was "The 
Rivers of Iowa." 

The succeeding papers were : " White and Yellow Water-Lilies," 
illustrated by beautiful mounted specimens, by Arthur Cox, of Iowa 
City; "Modes of Work," by J. N. Houghton, of Grinnell; "The 
Unionidx of the Mississippi," by Louis Block, of Davenport; 
"Technical Terms," by J. F. Clarke, of Fairfield; "Why Coal is 
not found in Wisconsin," by J. G. Laughton, of Chapter 134, 
De Pere, Wis. ; "The Agassiz Association, an Educational Insti- 
tution," by Mrs. F. A. Reynolds, of Chapter 852, Willis, Montana 
Territory; "The Egyptian Lotus and its American Cousins," by 
Miss Jessie L. Hoopcs, of Chapter 950, Swarthmore, Pa.; "The 
Distribution of Lead," by Mr. Cary Carper, of Chapter 807, Bur- 
lington, Iowa ; and " Notes on the Grasshopper," by Mr George L. 
Marsh, of Marshalltown, Iowa. 

In the evening the delegates marched in a body to the banquet- 
hall, which had been elaborately decorated. 

Three long tables extending across the hall were laden with all 
that goes to make a delicious banquet. They were adorned with 
flowers, gracefully arranged in beautiful sea-shells; while here and 
there more elaborate designs lent dignity to the scene. One of the 
handsomest wreaths was of pure white flowers, on which the name 
Agassiz appeared, in flowers of glowing red, thus combining the 
national colors of Switzerland. After the delegates had enjoyed the 
feast, Prof McBride, of the Iowa State University, acting as toast- 
master, called upon the President of the Association to respond to 
the first toast, Louis Agassiz. 

Among the other toasts proposed, and happily responded to by 
members and friends of the A. A., were: "The Scientists who Help 
Us " ; "The Agassiz Association in Our Homes " ; " Our Girls"; 
"Our Boys"; "The Iowa Assembly of the A. A." 

At the conclusion of his speech in response to the last toast, 
President Boynton surprised the President of the A. A. by presenting 
to him, on behalf of the Iowa Assembly, an extremely handsome 
jeweled watch charm, in the form of the Swiss cross, our Association 
badge. 

The proceedings of Thursday opened with a pleasant trip to Gov- 
ernment Island, where a photograph of the entire convention was 
taken, with the grim background of one of the arsenal buildings. 

In the afternoon, after a lively discussion of some of the ninety- 
five intricate questions found in the Question- Box, a number of papers 
on Methods of Work, and a series of very interesting historical 
sketches of various Chapters of the A. A., were read, and President 
H. H. Ballard gave an address on "The History and the Aims 
of the Agassiz Association." In the evening Professor Mctlride 



THE A G A S S I Z ASSOCIATION. 



75 



delivered a lecture of surpassing interest and pathos on Palissy, 
the Huguenot potter. 

On Friday a delightful excursion was made down the Mississippi 
to Buffalo, where a picnic was enjoyed on the beautiful grounds of 
Captain Clarke. 

During the week, and particularly on Wednesday morning, the 
delegates were received most cordially at the Academy of Sciences, 
where many pleasant hours were spent in examii ing the rare and 
valuable specimens belonging to that institution— Indian relics, 
copper axes, pipes, ancient pottery, and the much-discussed tablets 
with strange inscriptions. We must mention as the most beauti.ul 
objects in the Academy two slabs on which lie tangled, in a pattern 
of marvelous grace and loveliness, no less than nineteen dilferent 
species of crinoids, or "stone-lilies," which have been so skillfully 
worked out by the patient dexterity of Mr. Pratt, the curator, that 
each is perfect in stem and flower, and every several joint. 

On the whole, the convention was a marked success. It served to 
acquaint the delegates with one another, to establish friendships, 
quicken zeal, and arouse popular interest. It will result in the for- 
mation of many new Chapters, and in the organization of " Assem- 
blies " in other States. Already, in Massachusetts, Illinois, New 
York, Michigan, Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, and Maine, move- 
ments are on footlooking toward this desirable end ; and it is almost 
safe to predict that the next National Convention will meet in one 
of those States, under the auspices of its " State Assembly. " 

H. H. B. 



The preceding report of our Convention, at Davenport, brings our 
Association pleasantly to the close of another year. 

The outlook for the future was never so bright. Many new Chap- 
ters are rapialy organizing, and old Chapters are uniiing in State 
Assemblies ; new courses of study are being planned, and better 
methods of work are being learned. 

Now, at the beginning of the year, is the best time to join us. 
Look over the files of St. Nicholas for the past five years, or write 
for our A. A. Hand-book, and you will learn all about our history 
and our aims. We most cordially invite you all, young and old, to 
join us in our work. 

We are planning two important courses of study for the coming 
year — one, a continuation of the course in mineralogy, so success- 
fully accomplished under Professor Crosby, and the other, a some- 
what similar course in elementary zoology. If nothing unforeseen 
shall occur, we hope to make definite announcement of one or both 
these courses in the December number of this magazine. Let us 
now take a survey of the work accomplished during the year by the 

SEVENTH CENTURY, 

Chapters fkn to 700, inclusive. 

6ot, Purvis, Miss. We have lately received a beautiful lot of 
shells that came as ballast on a ship from the West Indies. We 
should like to exchange with other Chapters, and can furnish speci- 
mens of Mississippi flowers. — R S. Cross, bee. 

604, Fredonia, N. Y. Our Chapter steadily holds its way, get- 
ting and doing what good it can. Our six members have observed 
and learned much during the year, and all have the benefit of what 
one learns. One visited Kansas, Nebraska, ar.d Dakota, and 
brought home to us mineral specimens and an interesting account 
of the wonderful and beautiful scenery of the West. Two of us vis- 
ited the noted ''Panama Rocks," in this county, so interesting to 
geologists. One has taken the course of study in minerals, which has 
proved a great help to us ail. Our entomologist has raised, besides 
many ether species, twenty Luna moths and thirty of the Bombyx 
mori Wishing continued prosperity to the A. A. — Mrs. Jennie N. 
Curtis, Sec. 

605, Gravestend, Essex Co.. N. J. I am pleased to be able to 
tell you that our Chapter is gaining ground rapidly. We have had 
fifteen dollars appropriated from the treasury for ihn purchase of 
books to form the nucleus of a library. Hoping to increase in good 
work, and grateful for kind words from you. — Wilbcr W. Jackson, 
Sec. 

{ This report came a few months ago, but lias not been printed. ] 
609, Brooklyn, N, Y. After our vacation, it was good to come 
together again, and see what each had to tell of summer work. One 
brought four casts of mounted insects; another, a quantity of speci- 
mens from the seashore; another, manv pressed flowers. One of 
the very youngest had a note-book with no'es of some interesting 
things she had seen, as, for instance, a snake-skin which she had 
picked up on the road. It was wrong side out, and perfect from 
head to tail. Two members studied caterpillars from observation, 



keeping them in a room in the wood-house. One borer caterpil- 
lar made its way into the side of a pine box, where it is now, with 
the entrance neatly gummed up 

One of the older members was able to interest some little children 
in the A. A. during the summer, and they saw all the changes 
of the Danais Archippns, from tiny caterpillars just hatched on 
the swamp milkweed, until the perfect butterfly came out. The 
cocoon, you know, is one of the most beautiful, End these children 
wre so interested, that they collected other caterpillars, and soon 
had four or five kinds of cocoons, besides butterflies ar.d dragon-flies 
mounted, and, best of all, their eyes open to look arour.d them and 
see what they too can find. We n;eet e\ery Wednesday afternoon 
at three o'clock, and seldom have a member absent, which is a good 
sign that we like to come — Philip Van Ingcn, Cor. Pec. 

[Tilts report, too, has been waiting in onr pigeon-hole some time.] 

610, Racine, Wisconsin. In February last an effort was made 
to renew the work of this Chapter. A meeting was held, March 20, 
at which the following officers were elected and rerewed: H. L. 
Wheeler, President ; Ceo. S. Whitney, Treasurer; F. C. Emery, 
Secietary; Chas. F. Lewis, Corn.spoi.ding Secretary. 

From this meeting the Chapter has been doing good work. The 
specimens collected during the past two yeais have been to a great 
extent classified. Lectures ha\e been gi\en on "Air,' "Circula- 
tion of the Blood" (with illustrations), " Termites," End "Hive 
Bees." These were all excellent and very instructive. 

We have several cocoons in a case, and frcm oihers have hatched 
some fine moths. We have a room where we meet, and in which are 
the cabinets (sf, specimens, books, and instruments. In connection 
with our Chapter we have what we call an associate membership. 
This consists of those members of the schrol whoaie not old enough 
to become regular active members, and of those who are desirous of 
becoming active members. These associates have the access to the 
room when an active member is in it : they collect specimens for the 
Chapter, and may attend the meetings, but need not. By means of 
this we are able to train the younger boys, and lest the steadfastness 
of the older ones. 

We have about one hundred classified geological specimens, thirty- 
five of which have been lately presented to us. Ihese latter are 
Lake Superior ores. We have also about one hundred unclassified 
specimens. 

We have about forty 01 "logical specimens, a good number of books, 
and several instruments. Among these is a microscope. We also 
have the use of a very powerful microscope belonging to the college 
laboratory. 

630, N. Y. City. Our Chapter was only organized a litt'e over a 
month ago, but we are getting on very well. 1 he members who 
study ornithology are fast making a collection of birds. During the 
winter we expect to meet once a week. — Rufus Hatch Jr., Sec. 

644, Philadelphia, Pa. At present we have on our roll the names 
of fourteen active and four honorary men bers. Our meetings are 
held on the first and third Mondays of each month, and for the last 
six months have been well attended, much of the interest manifested 
being due to a series of lectires on chemistry, well illustrated with 
experiments bv our Curator, Geo. E. Paul. Papers ha\e been read 
on various subjects, among them "The Cicada" (Professor Holt, 
one of our honorary members, being present with his specimens and 
adding much to the evening's instruction) ; 

" Cyclosis in vegetable cells" ; 

" Volvox Globator " ; 

" What is a Diatom " ; 

"Hydra Vulgaris;'; 

(Th' se four were illustrated by specimens under the microscope, 
two of our members owning instruments. ) 

" Sponges"; 

" Crystallography " ; 

" The Chemistry 7 of Bread-making," etc. 

The Chapter had its picnic on June 24th, on the banks of the 
\\ issahickon Creek. As part of the entertainment we had a heavy 
hail-storm; nore of the stones were longer than %-inch, but their 
numbers made up their lack of size. We noticed that ihe stone had 
a white snowlike uucleu c , then a layer of clear ice, and outside 
another layer of hardened snow. — E. F. Lindsay, Sec, 25 south 
6th St. 

645, Bath, jV. Y. The following question has been asked, and 
not answered by anv of us ; we should like to have it put in St. 
Nicholas — What is instinct? We are getting along as well as 
usual, having about eight or ten regular members. With the best 
wishes for the prosperity of the A. A. — Wm. H. Church, Sec. 

655, New Lyme, Ohio. No. 655 was organized in the spring of 
'8.j with seven (7) members. 

As most of us were students at So. New Lyme, the Chapter soon 
broke up, for main' of us were from abroad. 

Nevertheless, since that time I have not given up. 

I, the only member at the present time, am at New Lyme still, at- 
tending school. I spend what time I can in collecting, studying, 
and labeling specimens. 

During the winter I spent a good many hours out in the cold try- 
ing to draw snow crystals. I succeeded in getting quite a large 
number. I will copy them as soon as possible, and send them to 
you. 

As to collecting butterflies and insects, I have had no luck at all. 



T II K A G A S S I Z ASSOCIATION. 



[November, 



In my last term of school (which closed June 17), I began botany 
and became very much interested in it. I therefore obtained a lim- 
ited knowledge of flowers. 

I have exchanged with different persons and obtained a large 
number of specimens. I have also received some very fine speci- 
mens from friends in the West. 

My whole collection contains about 200 specimens. — F. E. Loucks. 

672, Chicago Lawn. Will you please publish for me a notice in the 
next issue of the St. Nicholas, asking all the Chapters in Illinois 
to correspond with me in regard to organizing a State Assembly ? I 
hope we will be able to organize in Illinois. It will draw the mem- 
bers closer together, and benefit us in many ways. 

Your obedient servant, George L. Brockman, 

Mount Sterling, Illinois 



[ We call the special attention of all Illino, 
f>o?-ta?ti a?uio7tncement.\ 



Chapters to this in 



676, Burlington, N. J. This Chapter has the honor of reporting 
to you that it is in a fine condition, and has admitted one new mem- 
ber, whose name is Robert Ewan. The following report is respect- 
fully submitted to you for inspection, and is a true statement of the 
condition of our Chapter at the present time. 

Our collection embraces, 

Minerals 272-300 specimens. 

Birds' eggs 200—225 " 

Fossils -50- 75 

Also woods, mosses, petrifactions, marine curiosities, land and 
water shells, and other articles not classified. Also Indian ax-heads, 
corn-pounders, arrow and spear-heads, drills, skinners, etc., in ad- 
dition to about 500 coins (U. S. cents, etc.) — which are plainly not 
formations of nature ! — Charles P. Smith, Jr. 

678, Taunton, Mass. Since my last report our Chapter has de- 
creased in membership, but increased in interest. There are now 
only four members in our Chapter. This year has been the most 
successful since we began. In the winter, we had lectures and essays 
on different subjects, some of which were illustrated by the polyop- 
ticon. On the evening of Agassiz's birthday we gave an entertain- 
ment and an exhibition of specimens. In the winter we had an 
unfortunate accident by which we lost quite a number of eggs, but 
we have worked harder than ever, and made good the loss, along 
with more valuable specimens. We are at work now, principally 
on minerals and plants. Our curator has mounted some pretty 
specimens of seaweed, while on a vacation. We have discovered in 
this locality some very fine specimens of pink chalcedony. We took 
Professor Crosby's course in mineralogy, and found it highly inter- 
esting. Wishing success to the A. A. — Daniel J. Mehegan. Sec. 

682, Philadelphia, Pa, During the year our Chapter has had no 
format meetings, but as the members are in the same family we do 
not find them necessary. 

In July the Chapter was presented with several cucujos from Cuba 
which we kept alive several weeks on sugar-cane from Cuba. They 
make a beautiful greenish light, over which they have perfect control. 

The Secretary devoted the month of August to the collection and 
study of the common " Lepidoptera " of Philadephia, of which he 
has quite a collection, — Jas. E. Brooks, Sec. 

684, Gilbertsville, N. V. Our meetings during the winter were 
held less frequently, and the attendance was so limited that we were 
inclined to be discouraged, but now the interest is rapidly increasing, 
and our meetings will, no doubt, prove very profitable. 

Several new members have been added during the past year, and 
visitors are present at nearly every meeting. During the winter 
many of our subjects were taken from the Grallatores. Other sub- 
jects were the large animals, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, etc. 
During the spring we studied fishes, especially those of our streams. 
— Elizabeth Bryant, Sec. 

698, Middleport, N. J". Our Chapter is just as lively to-day as 
ever it was. At the closing exercises of our school, we had our cab- 
inets, pictures, and charter, all trimmed with bunting and flowers, 
and a visiting clergyman gave us a very high compliment and wished 
us the best success. A good many of us can analyze any of the 
common flowers. We have fifty members. — J. W. Hinchey, Pres. 

700, Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. We have just finished Professor Crosby's 
lessons in mineralogy, and found them very instructive. We have 
about two hundred specimens, but they are not all classified. We sent 
three delegates to the convention at Davenport. They enjoyed it 
very much, and we hope to profit by it. We expect to continue the 
study of geology, but will not rely so much on books and minerals 
from a distance, but study the minerals found around home. — Grace 
Roberts, Sec. 

Delaved Reports. 

[Besides the following, a late but gratifying report comes front 
S$f, Buffalo, N. 1'.} 



514, Iowa City, Iowa. Our Chapter is progressing. We num- 
ber fourteen members. For the past year we have held meetings 
once a week, with but three exceptions. Of those meetings one 
out of every three would be a lecture ; while the other two would be 
taken up with papers and discussions by the members. 

We have a large cabinet filled with fossils, minerals, and marine 
specimens. We have some forty bird-skins and a good start on a 
collection of insects ; also one hundred pressed plants, analyzed and 
mounted. Different members have made about sixty excursions 
in this vicinity during the year. Yours truly, Dillon L. Ross, Sec. 

584, Colorado Sp?ings. We are a family of father, mother, and 
two sons, who are both over twenty-one, and we are all interested in 
this " undeveloped country." We have a way of getting informa- 
tion about birds and rocks, but until the appearance of Professor 
Coulter's "Rocky Mountain Botany," we could only gather and ad- 
mire the flowers. The A. A. mentioned Professor Jones among its 
scientists, and we knew him to be good authority ; so, to avail our- 
selves of his knowledge, we joined the Association, and are not sorry. 
We have transplanted into our yard the following wild shrubs and 
perennials: 



Columbine (four species). 

Larkspur. 

Meadow rue. 

Red gilia. 

Geranium (three species). 

White lily. 

Cactus (six species). 

Penstemon (six species). 

Fairy-bell. 

Anemone (two species). 

Moccasin flower. 

Violet (two species). 



Bear raspberry. 

Spirea (two species). 

Saxifrage. 

Plum. 

Choke-cherry. 

Flowering currant. 

Wolfberry. 

Wild rose. 

Woodbine. 

Peas. 

Clematis (two species). 

Harebell. 

Soapweed. 

We have also a large collection of the wild flowers of this region, 
dried and named as far as we have been able to get their names. We 
are arranging a cabinet of shells, mosses, and seeds. — Mrs. E. B. 
McMorris, Sec. 

Exchanges. 

Pentremites and oolitic limestone, for fossils and minerals. — 
John W. Durkee, Jr., Bowling Green, Ky. 

Correspondence on botany desired with Chapters far South or 
North.— Miss Nellie Scull, Rochester, Ind. 

Fine specimens of serpentine, marble, felspar, mica, garnets in the 
rough, and conglomerate, all correctly labeled with name and local- 
ity, for Indian relics, etc. — E. C. Gilbert, 217 William St., Bridge- 
port, Conn. 

Minerals. Lists exchanged. — Daniel I. Mehegan, Taunton, Mass. 

Lepidoptera.— }. F. Estes, Sec, Arnold's Mills, R. I. 



Chapters, New and Reorganized. 



No. 

976 
977 
978 

979 



982 
983 
630 
35° 



Name. No. of Members. 

Maiden, Mass. (C) 

Bridgeport, Conn. (B) . 
Ashburnham, Mass. (B) 

Chillicothe, O. (A) 

Des Moines, Iowa (A) 



A ddress. 



901 

742 



Cumberland, R. I. (A)... 
Rindge, N. H. (A) .... 
Birmingham, Ala. (B) 
New York, N. Y. (Q) . 

Orange, Cal. (A) 

York. Pa. (A) 

Cape Romain, S. C. (A) , 

New York, N. Y. (C) . . . 
Lacrosse, Wis. (A) 

Taylorville, 111. (A). 

Grinnell, Iowa (A) 

Hartford, Conn 

Jefferson, O. (B) 



Miss Nellie Esau. 
4. .E. C. Gilbert, 217 William St- 
2. .Mrs. A. B. Marble. 
4 John Ruhiah. 

4. Miss Jessie Sharpnack, 
1 145 9th St. 

5.. J. F. Fstes. Arnold's Mills, R. I. 
8. Ansel Phelps, Camp Harvard. 
^ . .John L. Hibbard, box 492. 
6. . Rufus Hatch, Jr., 475 5th Ave. 
4. . M. F. Bradshaw. 

5. Miss Annie Strickler. 

2. Miss Mary Van B. Stevenson 
(via McClellanville). 
4. R. S. Bright, 643 W. 4 Sth St. 
4. Mrs. D. S. McArthur, 

212 S. 6th St. 
4 . . Samuel Cook. 
4. ."A. A. Box 523." 
7. .F. W. Colton, 31 Barbour St. 
r .A. E. Warren, Rio Vista, Va_ 



Dissolved. 

907 Meriden, Iowa .... Members re •moved from town. 

421 Petahima, Cal Miss Cora E. Derby. 

299 Watertown, N. Y Nicoll Ludlow, Jr 

All are invited to join the Association. Secretaries of Chapters 
801-qoo, please report at once. Address all communications for this 
department to Mr. Harlan H. Ballard, 

Pittsfield, Mass. 



THE LETTER-BOX. 



77 



THE LETTER-BOX. 



Here are four more letters from far-away lands — one of the little 
writers living in Russia, another in Queensland, another in South 
Africa, and a fourth in the Sandwich Islands: 

Novinkav. 

Dear St. Nicholas : I am a little Russian girl who lives in 
Moscow. 1 have been receiving your journal for the last three 
years, and like it more than any other journals I receive. I think 
" Little Lord Fauntleroy " is the prettiest story I ever read. I hope 
you will print this letter ; please do. We spend the summer in the 
country, and we enjoy ourselves very much. I have been in the 
Crimea last year, and will go there again this autumn. It was there 
I saw the sea for the first time, and I love it very much. I was once 
very near being drowned. We went out to sea in a boat, and a 
storm came on ; our mast was broken, and two or three waves went 
over the boat, so that we were quite wet, but still we came safely 
to shore. 

I am afraid this letter will be too long if I go on. 

Your loving little reader, Mari>ussa S. 



Budd is a small boy of six summers. His teacher had been trying 

to explain to him the movement of the earth upon its axis. At night, 
when he was being put to bed, he surprised his mother by asking 
that she would wake him very early the next morning. His mother 
asked him why he wished to get up so early. He replied, " I want 
to see China go by." 

Very truly yours, John G. Reading, Jr. 



The Value of Observation. 

Stockbridge, Mass. 
Dear St. Nicholas: Don't you wish you could come up here 
to Stockbridge ? My little five-year-old city cousin is here and finds 
many curious things to interest him. He has just finished dictating 
to me a letter to his father. He says in it, " The trees are all made 
of wood, and the leaves are painted green inside and out." This 
shows the value of observation. 

Yours truly, Maisv M. G. 



Poole Island, Bowen, Queensland. 

Dear St. Nicholas : You are the dearest and best of all my 
books, and I do want to write and tell you so. 

My father has taken St. Nicholas four years for me, and now 
they are bound. 

I live on a small island in the Pacific. I have two little brothers. 
Jack and Leonard, and we have fine games on the rocks. 

I have just had a lovely doll out from England, where we used to 
live two years ago. 

I have not read your big stories yet. I like "Little Red Hen." 
in September number, 1885, very much, and I think the " Brownies " 
very funny. 

We have some very pretty flowers, most of them grown from seeds 
we brought from England. 

We go out in a boat sometimes. 

Please do print my letter in the Letter-Box. Mother thinks per- 
haps you will, as you don't have many letters from little girls in 
North Queensland. I am seven and a half years old. 

From y<>ur little friend. Dorothy S . 



Griqua Land West, Dist. West Barkly, 
Waldecks Plant, South Africa. 
Dear St. Nicholas : I have been taking you for a year or 
more, and I think you very pleasant to read; and it seems to me 
that I can not part with you. Papa brought me the first numbers of 
you, but he is going to get me the other numbers also. My eldest 
sister, Rosa, is eleven years old, and I have a little sister Ella, who 
is four years old, and I am eight years. So, dear St. Nicholas, 
Your constant reader, Katie A. Teppe. 



Wailuku Maui, Sandwich Islands. 
Dear St. Nicholas: In one of the late numbers of the St. Nicho- 
las I read a very interesting article on " Vegetable Clothing," audi 
thought perhaps some of the readers of the St. Nicholas would like 
to hear about the vegetable clothing that the natives of the Sandwich 
Islands used to wear. The cloth is called tapa, or kapa. It is made 
from the bark of the Wauke tree. The bark is soaked in water until 
the fibers are all separated; then it is spread out on a flat surface 
and pounded with a hard wooden mallet until all the fibers adhere 
together. The mallet has different patterns cut out on it, and as the 
tapa is pounded, the pattern is stamped on it. It is very scarce, 
and costs a great deal now, as there are only a few old natives who 
know how to make it. I have lived here just one year, and expect 
to go back to California soon. 1 think this is a delightful place, 
and would much rather stay here a year or two longer than to go 
back now. The fruits of the island are delicious. We have figs, 
mangoes, guavas, pawpaws, oranges, ohias, and bananas all ripe now. 
I am afraid I am making this letter too long, so I will say, " Aloha." 

Nina Louise B. 



Budd's Idea of the Revolution of the Earth. 

WlLLIAMSPORT, Pa. 

Dear St. Nicholas: The following incident came to my knowl- 
edge only a few days ago, and I thought it so good that I have 
determined to send it to you. 



Manai.apan, N. J. 
Dear St. Nicholas; In reading "George Washington," in 
your July number, 1 saw an account of the battle of Monmouth. 
We live about four miles from the battle-ground. The old Tennent 
church, which stood on the battle-ground, is still standing and in 
good repair. It has two rows of small windows and a quaint little 
steeple. Inside, the pulpit is built very high and has a sounding- 
board hanging over it. The pews are high, straight-backed, and 
very uncomfortable; many of them are stained with the blood of 
the Revolutionary soldiers. Visitors sometimes chip pieces out with 
their penknives to carry away as mementoes. Just outside the door 
stands a sturdy oak which stood there at the time of the battle. At the 
west end of the church is the grave of Colonel Moncton, a Scotch 
soldier of the British army. Farther down the road on the battle* 
ground stood the old Tennent parsonage, where the Rev. William 
Tennent lived. When they tore it down, several years ago, many 
relic-seekers went there tor relics, and my father has a cane, the 
wood of which was cut from a beam in the house. Monday, the 
28th of June, was the one hundred and eighth anniversary of the 
battle. Hoping this letter will not be too long to print, I remain, 
Your interested reader, Mariana VanD . 



Dear St. Nicholas: 1 enjoy you so much that I thought I 
ought to write and tell you so. I think that " Little Lord Fauntle- 
roy " is the loveliest story ! And is n't he the dearest and most inter- 
esting little fellow ! I was very much interested in " From Bach to 
Wagner," as 1 love music dearly, and I was very sorry when it was 
ended. I like " Historic Girls" very much, too; and I think Miss 
Swett's stories are all perfectly delightful. I hope that she will 
write another one soon ; they are so natural, I think, and it seems 
to me she must know and love girls and boys very well. I hope, 
if we have any French historic girl, that it will be Joan of Arc, for I 
like her very much; she was so splendidly brave. I have taken 
you for a long time, and I should like to take you always, even 
when I am grown up. I wonder if all your readers hate to grow 
up as I do. Now, good-bye, dear St. Nicholas. 

Your true reader. Madeline S. Ashmond. 



All Saints Vicarage, Northampton, England. 
Dear St, Nicholas: My bj-other has taken you for a year, and 
we are all very fond of you. My brother has had a lot of letters from 
America about some pop-corn in a letter of his in the February num- 
ber. Please print this, as it is the first I have written. I would 
be so pleased to have it put in. I am nine years old. My brother 
is writing this for me. Your affectionate little reader, 

Flossy H. 

South Bend, Ind. 
Dear St. Nicholas: One night my papa came home from up- 
town with a St. Nicholas. It was the Christmas number of 1SS0. 
Since that time my sister and I have had every numberbut one. We 
are all very much interested in "Little Lord Fauntleroy." Papa 
and mamma and a number of our neighbors are reading it. I think 
Lord Fauntleroy is very "cute," and often wish he was my brother. 
Your constant reader, Mabel T . 



78 



THE LETTER-BOX. 



[November, 



The following are the final letters received by St. Nicholas con- 
cerning the vexed question of curve-pitching: 

Chetopa, Kansas. 

Dear St. Nicholas: Allow me to give a hint toward the solu- 
tion of the ball-curve question. 

If a light piece of wood, say two inches square and a foot long, be 
thrown sidewise, with a swift rotation, it will make a sharp curve in 
the direction of the rotation ; because one side rolls over the air un- 
obstructed, while the opposite side rolls swiftly against the air, and 
that side acts as a sail, striking obliquely against the air with force 
enough to crowd it out of right line. 

I suppose a ball curves for the same reason, and therefore it would 
not curve m the vacuum. 

A rifle-ball curves from another cause, and it would curve still 
more in a vacuum. E. C. G. 



Now the ball has a new upper half, D, and a new lower half, C, 
and in another one-fourth revolution D will again go farther than 
C. D, D > C, C 

Thus we see that the top is constantly gaining on the bottom, and 
the ball must, the.efore, curve. The same is true of any direction 
(sideways or up; in which the ball may whirl. 

I have drawn the path of the ball straight, for convenience, and 
have also imagined that the ball changes its upper half at every one- 
fourth revolution ; but of course it does change constantly, but the 
effect is just the same. 

I hope you will publish this explanation, as I am confident that it 
is correct; and 1 further believe that if the whole distance, the veloc- 
ity, and the distance the ball goes while revolving once were given, 
a skillful mathematician could figure the distance the tall would 
curve. Yours forever, Steve Goodman. 



Lincoln, III. 

Dear St. Nicholas : I have been very much interested in the 
discussion of the "curved" ball, and wish to submit the following 
explanation of "why a ball curves," for those of your readers who 
may be interested in the problem. 

I consider Mr. Stevens's theory correct, as given in your Letter- 
Eox for April, but the force he has in mind is in reality overcome by 
a greater force, which causes the ball to curve in the opposite direc- 
tion, as stated by Mr. Folsom. 

In order the more fully to understand the action of this force, let 
us suppose a ball to be thrown swiftly forward without rotation. 
The air meets all parts of the front of the ball at the same velocity, 
and hence there is no tendency for the ball to deviate from its course. 

But now, while moving forward, suppose the ball to rotate rapidly 
from right to left about a vertical axis, the air will then meet the 
right-hand portion of the ball with a velocity equal to the forward 
motion of the ball plus the motion of rotation, an I the left-hand por- 
tion with a velocity equal to the forward motion minus the motion 
of rotation. Hence it is plain that the air impinges upon the right- 
hand portion of the ball with greater velocity than on the left-hand 
portion. This difference of velocity causes a difference of pressure, 
which is greaLer on the right-hand side of the ball than on the left, 
and hence the ball is " crowded over" to the left, causing the "out- 
curve." 

The anonymous communication in your February number gives 
all the conditions correctly, but arrives at a ivrong conclusion, as m 
fact the ball would curve the other way under the conditions there 
given. 

A complete discussion of this problem would be interesting, but 
would take too much space and time for the present purpose. If the 
above is of sufficient interest to warrant it, please insert it in the 
Letter-Box. An interested reader, Arthur C. Braicher. 



Indianapolis, Ind. 
Dear St. Nicholas: I wish to reply to your correspondentFred. 

N. Folsom, whose letter will be found on page 476, April number of 
St. Nicholas, regarding the fact — for it is a fact — that a ball thrown 
with a twist will not curve the right way to suit the theory of Robt. 
L. Stevens and others. It seems to me the following is the solution : 
^^a The ball is thrown from P with 

/*« ^^^^^^^ the left twist, as indicated in the dia- 

f %^-V-"~~" a gram, but instead of curving to the 

Sr *" right, as K. L. S supposes, it takes 

the path P, B and curves to the left. 

Now with the ball in motion at M, there is a compacted cushion of 

air in front of it and comparatively little behind it. '1 he side 10 

carries air, by friction, backward, while x carries it forward. That 



carried by iu meets no resistance and is thrown off tangentially, 
the rear of the ball ; that carried by x is opposed by the air-cushion 
before spoken of, and tends to collect at the points. Consequently 
the ball meets resistance at z, the effect of which is to drive it in the 
curve P, B. Quod erat demonstrandum. J L. K 

Birmingham, Mich. 

Dear St. Nicholas: Like Mr. Fred. Folsom, I am not a sub- 
scriber to you, but I have bought you of our newsdealer for about 
seven years, and so I also claim my " little say " on the "curve ball 
question " 

The ball most certainly does curve in the opposite direction from 
that indicated in your February number (the circumstances being 
the same), and the same mistake is in the explanation in the April 
number also. 

Now I should like to offer an original explanation ; and in the first 
place I will say that I think the air has nothing to do with it. 

When the ball leaves or starts from 

(A_ p ?~~^ O, it is supposed to be revolving as 
L_\ ]QyS|Si indicated by the arrow. We will mark 
^ ./--— ^" ft C"l - *""" v ■ J tnc ' ll PP c ' r half A, and the lower B. 
a c While the ball is going the distance 

from O to O', we suppose the ball 
makes one-fourth of a revolution, and then we will see that the 
upper half, A, has gone farther than the lower half, B. A, A > B, B. 



Cortland. 
Dear St. Nicholas: I wish so much to put a letter in your 
Letter-Box and let you know how much we all enjoy your magazine, 
which I have taken for a long time. I go to school to the Cobble- 
stone school; so we call the scholars cobble-stones. My teacher. 

Miss A , takes your beautiful magazine for the school, ard reads 

to us every day. We are^ery much interested in Frank R. Stockton's 
writings, especially when he took us to Naples and the buried cities 
of Pompeii and Herculaneum. We are also anxiously waiting for 
the next number to see what the queer little Brownies are going to 
do. 1 am nine years old. Perhaps next month you will hear from 
another cobble-stone ; we are nearly sixty in number, and all of us 
wish to tell how we like you. 

Your little friend, Carl P 



Ocean View, Felixstowe, England. 
Dear St. Nicholas : I have taken you since I was eleven, 
for nearly three years. I like you better than any English magazine, 
and we all th'nk you are awfully jolly. 

I have sent you a little poem ; it is my first, so I do hope you will 
print it. 1 should like to write a bcok of poems. 
I shall take you always, even when I am grown up. 

Always your loving Erica. 

What I Saw in the Summer. 

A sea-gl'll white speeds o'er the deep blue sea ; 
The sheep and lambs wind slowly o'er the lea; 
The children, laughing gayly, run home to tea. 

A pretty yacht blown onward by the wind, 

A lovelier sight I 'm sure you ne'er would find.- — 

Remember, children, always to be kind. 

The children, off to school, run o'er the hill, 
Over the brook and meadows, past the mill ; 
The hunter, gun in hand, goes forth to kill. 



Another young poet, a girl of thirteen, sends us the following: 

Omaha, Nee. 
Dear St. Nicholas: 

A week to-day, 
Since a lovely baby-boy came to stay, 
In the cozy cottage over the way. 

Of course he 's sweet, 
From crown of head to soles of feet ; 
But he needs a name to make him complete. 

" What 's in a name ? " 

Beautiful meanings they ofttimes claim; 
No life will be worse for a good old name. 

" Man of his word " 
Means Roger; Phineas, " name of a friend " ; 
Gilbert, " light of many " ; Hugh, " mighty to the end." 

Shall we call him 
Ralph, Robert, or George ? — (all family names — 
Malcolm and Donald have similar claims). 

What odds to me? 
Why care /so much whet the name shall be? 
/ '/;/ the baby s young auntie, — don't you see ? 

" Brownie." 



THE RIDDLE-BOX. 



79 



THE RIDDLE-BOX. 



ANSWERS TO PUZZLES IN THE OCTOBER NUMBER. 



Pi. There is a beautiful spirit breathing now 

Its mellow lichnesson the clustered trees, 
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes, 
Pouri.ig new glory on the autumn woods, 
And dripping in warm light the pillared clouds. 

Longfellow. " Autumn." 
Decapitations. Eastern, astern, stern, tern, em, R. N. (Royat 
Navy), N. 

Easy Half-square, i. Panama. 2. Aside. 3. Nina. 4. Ada. 
5. Me. 6. A 

St. Andrew's Cross of Diamonds. I. 1. F. 2. Lid. 3. 
Laced. 4. Fiction. 5. Deign. 6. Don. 7. N. II. 1. N. 2. 
Cup. 3. Canal. 4. Nuncios. 5. Paint. 6. Lot. 7. S. III. 1. 
N. 2. Nap. 3. Natal. 4. Natures. 5. Parma. 6. Lea. 7. S. 
IV. 1. N. 2. Hop. 3. Hotel. 4- Notices. 5. Pecan. 6. Len 
(to). 7. S V. 1. S. 2. Aim. 3. Armed. 4. Similes. 5. 
Melee 6. Dee. 7. S. 

Connected Wukd-squares. Scabbard. Upper square: 1. 
Sect. 2. Echo. 3. Cham. 4. Tomb. Lower square : 1. Brad. 
2. Race. 3. Acre. 4. Deed. 

Uniform Remainders. Tear. 1. Hearty. 2. Hatred. 3. 
Maters. 4. Barter. 5. Retard. 6' Crates. 7. Prated. 8. Parted. 
9. Stream. 10. Cretan. 11. Stared. 12. Treats. 



Illustrated Puzzle. Harvest-time. 1. Humiliation. 2. Ap- 
pellation. 3. Renovation. 4. Valuation. 5. Exhortation. 6. 
Situation. 7. Transportaiion. 8. Temptation. 9. Isolation. 10. 
Misquotation, n. Education. 

Double Achostics. 1. Primals, Heir: finals, Loom. Cross- 
words: 1. HerbaL. 2. EskimO. 3, IndigO. 4. RansoM II 
Primals, Cachalot ; finals, Physeter. Cross-words: 1. ClasP. 2. 
ApisH. 3. CrazY. 4. HymnS. 5. AlonE. 6. LeasT. 7. OlivE. 
8. TapiR. 

Numerical Enigma. 

The sweet, calm sunshine of October now 

Warms the low spot ; upon its grassy mold 
The purple oak-leaf falls ; ihe birchen bough 
Drops its blight spoil like arrow-heads of gold. 

Bryant. " October, iS66." 
Cube. From 1 to 2, steamers; 2 to 4, seashore; 3 to 4, glad- 
some ; r to 3, skimming ; 5 to 6, swimmers ; 6 to 8, sandwich ; 7 to 8, 
strength; 5 to 7, skippers; 1 to 5, sails; 2 to 6, seals; 4 to 8, earth ; 
3 to 7, gulls. 

Peculiar Acrostics. All Hallow E'en. All Saints' Eve. Cross- 
words ; 1. mArliAl. 2. gLobuLe. 3. sLeekLy. 4. cHeriSh 
5. cAravAn. 6. pLastlc. 7. gLowiNg. 2. rOseaTe. 9. sWin- 
iSh. 10. rEverEs. n. rEserVe. 12. aNnulEt. 



To our Puzzlers: In sending answers to puzzles, sign only your initials or use a short assumed name ; but if you send a complete 
list of answers you may sign your full name. Answers should be addressed to St. Nicholas " Riddle-box," care of The Century Co., 
33 East Seventeenth street, New York City. 

Answers to all the Puzzles in the August Number were received, before August 20, from Paul Reese — Edith Noel — Beth H. 
— L. and N. T.— Hugh G. Leighton — M. E. P.— Maggie T. Turrill — Effie K. Talboys and J. A. S.— tl N. O. Tarys"— Hazel- 
Nellie and Reggie — " Original Puzzle Club " — Francis W. Islip. 

Answers to Puzzles in the August Number were received, before August 20, from Harriet A. Dick, 2 — Chiddingstone and 
Elmhurst, 6 — " Clio," 1 — N. L. H., 3 — J. F.Weir, i— "Nelly Ely," 3— Alice R. D., 4— '• Friednch," 4— M. Sherwood, 8 — W. E. 
G., 1 — L. M. S., 1— L. B. R., 1— "Cen'l K.," 5— F. D., 5 — " Nanki-po," 3 — Alice M. and Daisy M. B , 1 — L W. Mitchell, 1 — 
S. K. W., i— J. A. H., 2— Addie Bowles, 1 — J. E, Nickerson, 1 — H. R. H., 3— Chase, 2 — Lizzie W., 4— "N. Bumpo." 2— "Miss 
Hurricane," 10 — '" S Lunn and J. Cake," 11 — L. D. S., 3 — Ada H., 1 — "J. A. Berwock," 4 — "Violet K.," 2 — I. C. A., 1 — Retlaw, 
3 — " Lord Dolphin," 2 — E, D., 2 — Ernest G, 1 — E. A. Haight. 1 — Elsie, 2 — Algarve, 4 — J. A. M. ( 1 — " Oakdale, L. L," 10 — 
A. E P , 2— C. M., 2— E. B. N , i—" Ninon," 3 — E. C. Patterson, 1 — H. H. C, 1— "R. O. O. Ster," 6 — Colonel and Reg, 1 — 
W, K. C, 1 — "Lynn C. Doyle," 3 — W. H. C. , 1 — " Yum Yum," 1 — E. W. and K. B. Knight. 4 — " Ben Zeene," 5 — " I ilyan," 2 — 
Bayard Sweeney, 3 — W. G. U., 1— Celynn, 7— X. Y. Z., 9 — K. C. and H. S., 9— F. H. Knauff, 3— Jo and I, 10— \V. R. M., 10 — 
E. S C , 1 — C. C. Rittenhouse, 8 — " Agricola," 9 — Emilie Q. N. Moon, 4 — Dolph, 2 — Noiiam Krap, 4 — Two Cousins, n — Puzzler, 
2—" Little L. F.," 2 — Nell, Lou, and Jo, 7 — Waterbury, 9 — A. G. L., 6 — W. L. C., 2 — C. and H. Condit, 9 — "Ronnoc," 2 — Gex, 
3 — Lily Wells, 2 — Alfred and Howard, 1 — F. Jersey, 10 — G. Whiz and S. K. I., 1 — " Stuff and Nonsense," 5 — One of " The Pards," 
6 — J. C, 4. 



ItHOMIlOIDS. 



I. Across: i. Conical. 2. A cavalry sword. 3. Purport. 4. .At 
no time. 5. To crowd or compress closely. 

Downward: i. In store. 2. Like. 3. To touch lightly. 4. A 



7. A coior. a. 
In store. 
3. Tested. 4. To 



boy's name. 5. To re-establish. 6. To wander. 
Two-thirds of a fashionable covering for floors. 9. 

II. Across: i. To fasten, 2. A body of water, 
follow. 5. Stalks. 

Downward: i. Insecure. 2 An exclamation. 3 To perform. 
4. Withered. 5. Aches. 6. A home. 7. Owed. 8. A printer's 
measure. 9. Insecure h. h. d, and " topsy and eva," 

ANAGRAMS. 



anagrams may be transposed to form the 



Each of the followin; 
name of a famous man. 

1. C. will love R. more. 2 I fad regal jams. 3. A pale barn 
poet? No, no. 4. I am Jan N. Flinnberk. 5. A wit-mill, Tip. 
6 ; A soft hen s for Jem. 7. No, call a Brahmin. S. Butcher Mo- 
riul's chops. "topsy and eva." 

GEOGRAPHICAL ACROSTIC. 

My primals, when read downward, will spell the name of a wheat- 
producing Siate. 

Cross-words: i. A city of New Hampshire. 2. The State in 
which Lincoln's youth was spent. 3. A State noted for its silver 
mines. 4. A republic of Central America. 5. A celebrated river of 



Asiatic Turkey. 6. The name of a town of India which means 
" city of the lion." 7. A large river whose name begins and ends 
with the same letter. S. The largest of the United States. 9. A 
river of South America. s. G. s. 

PI. 

Belst eb botes saftse hwit meplis plyent wedcron, 
Wheer lal cth durdy yalmif drouan 
Gluha ta teh jetss ro kraspn halt evern laif, 
Ro sihg thiw pyti ta meos furlumon tela. 



CUBE. 



From i to 2, to dismay ; from 2 lo 4, marine ; from 3 to 4, pertain- 
ing to the tropics ; from 1 to 3, aromatic ; from 5 to 6, to become 
mortified; from 6 to °, capable ci being drawn out; from 7 to S, to 
choke ; from 5 to 7, splendid ; from t to 5, a banner ; from 2 to 6, 
part of a tea-pot ; from 4 to S, part of the ear ; from 3 to 7, sailors. 

" jimmie." 



So 



THE RIDDLE-BOX. 



[November. 




York in the year 1830 ; the fourth row of letters spell a kind of 
ship first built in that year; and the last row ofletten 
v small but useful instruments first manufactured in that year. 

Cross-words: The son of Agamemnon. 2. A kind of swallow. 
3. What a Frenchwoman calls table-linen. 4. To bathe all over. 
5. Full to the top. 6. What a washerwoman should do to help in 
cleaning linen (two short words). 7. The nationality of one of the 
friends of Job. 8. To encompass. 9. Excess beyond what is 
wanted. E - L - E - 



REBUS. 



The answer to this rebus is a very familiar maxim, and the 
Latin quotation above it embodies the same idea. 

WORD BUILDING. 

To a word of two letters, meaning a Roman weight of twelve 
ounces, add a small coin, and make a mounting upward. 2. To 
the same two letters add the name of a German metaphvsician, and 
make sideways. 3. A long step, and make awry. 4. To begin a 
voyage, and make to set upon. 5. Dispatched, and make to yield. 

6. A gesture, and make a person to whom property is transferred. 

7. Declines, and make stock-in-trade 8. Dimension, and make 
any court of justice. 9. Kind, and make to arrange in order. 10. 
Certain, and to make confident, n. A bird, and make the rear of a 
ship. 12. A waiter, and make wrong. " l. los regni." 



CHARADE. 

M\\first, though false and bad and low, 

At bottom 's good alway; 
At night my second 's seen, although 

'T is always round by day. 
My whole 's a sport that 's all the go, 

And yet has come to stay. ADA and harry. 



DOUBLE DIAMOND. 

Across: i. In cantaloupe. 2. A genus of serpents. 3. An ex- 
clamation of regret. 4. A chemical substance. 5. A chief officer. 
6. Chinese weights. 7. A name bv which seaweeds were formerly 
called. 8. A boy's name. 9. In cantaloupe. 

Downward: i. In cantaloupe. 2. A part of a circle. 3. Close 
by. 4. A plaster. 5. An alliance. 6. Tartness. 7. The joints 
covered by the patella. 8. Printers' measures. 9. In cantaloupe. 

SIDNEY j. 

TRIPLE ACROSTIC. 

Each of the words described contains seven letters. When these 
have been rightly guessed and written one below the other, the first 
row of letters wiil spell the name of vehicles introduced into New 




I. Upper Square : 1. A kind of food mentioned in the Bible. 

2. To profit. 3. Termed. 4. A relative. 5. A kind of tree. 

II. Left-hand Square: i. An agreeable odor. 2. A compet- 
itor. 3. Egg-shaped. 4. Indian corn. 5. A kind of tree. 

III. Central Square: i. A kind of tree. 2. To depart. 3. 
Ventures. 4. An incident. 5. Intermissions. 

IV. Right-hand Square: i. Pauses. 2. A girl's name. 3. 
Polish. 4. Rigid. 5. Repose. _ . ■_ -: 

V. Lower Square: i. Reposes. 2. To bring into active opera- 
tion. 3. A Spanish form of address. 4. A figure of speech. 5. 
To scatter. • - M-. A. s. 

WORD-SQUARES. 

I. 1. A friend. 2. A compound of oxygen anda base free from 
acid and salt. 3. Sleeplessness. 4. A Roman magistrate. 5. To 
let anew. 

II. 1. Employment. 2. To mature. 3. A fruit. 4. A city of 
Hindostan. 5. An epic poem written by Virgil. 

III. 1. To cast down. 2. A division of Southern Germany. 

3. To grant entrance. 4. To take bv force. 5. To engage in. 

IV. 1. Ornamental vessels. 2. To venerate. 3. Pertaining to 
the sun. 4. To obliterate. 5. Withered. 

V. 1. An open shed for sheltering cattle. 2. A musical drama. 
3. The goddess of female beauty. 4. To break forth. 5. Molds 
of the human foot. 

VI. 1. The beginning of a journey. 2. A river of Europe. 3. 
Overhead. 4. To~vie with in return. 5. Plentiful in forests. 

F. L. F. 




IN CHRISTMAS SEASON, LONG AGO. 



ST. NICHOLAS 



Vol. XIV. 



DECEMBER, 1886. 



No. 



[Copyright, 18S6, by The CENTURY CO.] 

IN CHRISTMAS SEASON, LONG AGO. 
By Helen Gray Cone. 



■ Dear Cousin Jack, — 

Pray come to spend 
The Holly-days with your true Friend, 
In Hopes that Weather will permit. 
To your good Parents Pa has writ. 
And you, and Ned, and Frank can ride 
Your Poneys by the Chariot's side. 

I am desired to say that Nan 
Expects much Sport with Cousin Fan. 
She has a Doll from London Town, 
With an Egret, and Tabby Gown. 
She is so proud ! but, Jack, we Boys 
Can think of better Things than Toys. 

Hal begs his Love. Pray answer quick. 
Your faithfull loving 

Cousin Dick. 

P. S. — There came gilt Ginger-bread 
From England in a Box ; for Ned 
There 's a Dragoon, for Francis, too ; 
But, Jack, I '11 save King George for you ! " 



The yellowed letter, — so it runs. 
Oft read by sons and sons of sons. 

Above the formal sheet, outspread, 
Dick bent his curly, ribboned head, 
With tight-grasped goose-quill moving slow. 
That Christmas season, long ago. 

'T was sealed and sent; one must confess, 
111 sealed, — a finger burnt, I guess ! 
Black Pompey rode 'twixt kith and kin, 
With ebon face and ivory grin, 



To bear such letters to and fro, 
In Christmas season, long ago. 

Our fancy paints the Yule-tide sport 
At hospitable Holly Court ; 
How Dick, and Nan, and Harry ran 
To welcome Ned, and Frank, and Fan, 
And Jack, with apple cheeks aglow, — 
In Christmas season, long ago. 

What mirthful games ! what generous cheer ! 
What sirloins huge ! what cider clear ! 
What "puddens," — Dicky spelled it thus. — 
What nut-brown turkeys odorous ! 
What big mince-pies in spicy row, — 
In Christmas season, long ago ! 

As 'round the hearth the circle smiled, 
What log fires roared 'neath mantels tiled, 
Where, figuring forth the Scripture tale, 
Blue Jonah fed the azure whale ! 
What singing sounds ! what genial glow ! 
In Christmas season, long ago. 

What stories, told, as snug they sat, 
By Cousin This or Uncle That ! 
Till Dicky vowed to go to sea, 
But Jack a soldier bold would be, 
Fight for the King, and make a show 
In scarlet coat, — long, long ago ! 

All passed, like scenes in shifting fire : 

And sailor Dick grew up a squire ; 

While (strange the change the swift years bring!) 

Bold Jack fell fighting 'gainst the King. 

All vanished, like the melting snow 
Of Christmas season, long ago. 



8 4 



THE STORY OF PRINCE FAIRVFOOT. 





■ Jr . : J^ 






By Frances Hodgson Burnett. 



Once upon a time, in the days of the fairies, 
there was in the far west country a kingdom which 
was called by the name of Stumpinghame. It was 
a rather curious country in several ways. In the 
first place, the people who lived there thought 
that Stumpinghame was all the world ; they 
thought there was no world at all outside of 
Stumpinghame. And they thought that the peo- 
ple of Stumpinghame knew everything that could 
possibly be known, and that what they did not 
know was of no consequence at all. 

One idea common in Stumpinghame was really 
very unusual indeed. It was a peculiar taste in 
the matter of feet. In Stumpinghame the larger 
a person's feet were, the more beautiful and ele- 
gant he or she was considered ; and the more 
aristocratic and nobly born a man was, the more 
immense were his feet. Only the very lowest and 
most vulgar persons were ever known to have 
small feet. The King's feet were simply huge ; 
so were the Queen's ; so were those of the young 
princes and princesses. It had never occurred to any 
one that a member of such a royal family could 
possibly disgrace himself by being born with small 
feet. Well, you may imagine, then, what a terrible 
and humiliating state of affairs arose when there 
was born into that royal family a little son, a 
prince, whose feet were so very small and slender 
and delicate that they would have been considered 
small even in other places than Stumpinghame. 
Grief and confusion seized the entire nation. The 
Queen fainted six times a day; the King had black 
rosettes fastened upon his crown ; all the flags were 
at half-mast ; and the court went into the deepest 
mourning. There had been born to Stumping- 
hame a royal prince with small feet, and nobody 
knew how the country could survive it ! 



Yet the disgraceful little prince survived it and 
did not seem to mind it at all. He was the pret- 
tiest and best-tempered baby the royal nurse had 
ever seen. But for his small feet, he would have 
been the flower of the family. The royal nurse 
said so herself, and privately told his little royal 
highness's chief bottle-washer that she "never 
see a hinfant as took notice so, and sneezed as 
hintelligent." But of course the King and Queen 
could see nothing but his little feet, and very soon 
they made up their minds to send him away. So 
one day they had him bundled up and carried 
where they thought he might be quite forgotten. 
They sent him to the hut of a swineherd who lived 
deep, deep in a great forest which seemed to end 
nowhere. 

They gave the swineherd some money, and 
some clothes for Fairyfoot, and told him that if 
he would take care of the child, they would send 
money and clothes every year. As for themselves, 
they only wished to be sure of never seeing Fairy- 
foot again. 

This pleased the swineherd well enough. He 
was poor, and he had a wife and ten children, and 
hundreds of swine to take care of, and he knew he 
could use the little prince's money and clothes for 
his own family, and no one would find it out. So 
he let his wife take the little fellow, and as soon 
as the King's messengers had gone, the woman 
took the royal clothes off the Prince and put on 
him a coarse little night-gown, and gave all his 
things to her own children. But the baby prince 
did not seem to mind that — he did not seem to 
mind anything, even that he had no name but 
Prince Fairyfoot, which had been given him in 
contempt by the disgusted courtiers. He grew 
prettier and prettier every day, and long before 



THE STORY OF PRINCE F A I R Y F O T 



85 



the time when other children begin to walk, he 
could run about on his fairy feet. 

The swineherd and his wife did not like him at 
all ; in fact, they disliked him because he was so 
much prettier and so much brighter than their 
own clumsy children. And the children did not 
like him because they were ill-natured and only 
liked themselves. 

So as he grew older year by year, the poor little 
prince was more and more lonely. He had no 
one to play with, and was obliged to be always by 
himself. He dressed only in the coarsest and 
roughest clothes; he seldom had enough to eat, 
and he slept on straw in a loft under the roof of 
the swineherd's hut. But all this did not prevent 
his being strong and rosy and active. He was as 
fleet as the wind, and he had a voice as sweet as 
a bird's; he had lovely sparkling eyes, and bright 
golden hair ; and he had so kind a heart that 
he would not have done a wrong or cruel thing 
for the world. As soon as he was big enough, the 
swineherd made him go out into the forest every 





PaSBfe 




ti ..' ; ■ - 






THE SWINEHERD IS WELL PLEASED TO RECEIVE THE LITTLE 
PRINCE AND THE MONEY. 

day to take care of the swine. He was obliged to 
keep them together in one place, and if any of 
them ran away into the forest, Prince Fairyfoot 
was beaten. And as the swine were very wild and 
unruly, he was very often beaten, because it was 
almost impossible to keep them from wandering 



off; and when they ran away, they ran so fast, 
and through places so tangled, that it was almost 
impossible to follow them. 

The forest in which he had to spend the long 
days was a very beautiful one, however, and he 
could take pleasure in that. It was a forest so 
great that it was like a world in itself. There were 
in it strange, splendid trees, the branches of which 
interlocked overhead, and when their many leaves 
moved and rustled, it seemed as if they were whis- 
pering secrets. There were bright, swift, strange 
birds, that flew about in the deep golden sunshine, 
and when they rested on the boughs, they too 
seemed telling one another secrets. There was a 
bright, clear brook, with water as sparkling and 
pure as crystal, and with shining shells and peb- 
bles of all colors lying in the gold and silver sand 
at the bottom. Prince Fairyfoot always thought the 
brook knew the forest's secret also and sang it 
softly to the flowers as it ran along. And as for 
the flowers, they were beautiful ; they grew as 
thickly as if they had been a carpet, and under 
them was another carpet of lovely green moss. 
The trees and the birds, and the brook and the 
flowers, were Prince Fairyfoot's friends. He loved 
them, and never was very lonely when he was with 
them ; and if his swine had not run away so often, 
and if the swineherd had not beaten him so much, 
sometimes — indeed, nearly all summer — he would 
have been almost happy. He used to lie on the 
fragrant carpet of flowers and moss, and listen 
to the soft sound of the running water, and to the 
whispering of the waving leaves, and to the songs 
of the birds ; and he would wonder what they were 
saying to one another, and if it were true, as the 
swineherd's children said, that the great forest was 
full of fairies. And then he would pretend it was 
true, and would tell himself stories about them, 
and make believe they were his friends, and that 
they came to talk to him and let him love them. 
He wanted to love something or somebody, and 
he had nothing to love — not even a little dog. 

One day he was resting under a great green 
tree, feeling really quite happy because every- 
thing was so beautiful. He had even made a lit- 
tle song to chime in with the brook's, and he was 
singing it softly and sweetly, when suddenly, as he 
lifted his curly, golden head to look about him, 
he saw that all his swine were gone. He sprang 
to his feet, feeling very much frightened, and he 
whistled and called, but he heard nothing. He 
could not imagine how they all could have disap- 
peared so quietly, without making any sound; 
but not one of them was anywhere to be seen. 
Then his poor little heart began to beat fast with 
trouble and anxiety. He ran here and there; he 
looked through the bushes and under the trees; 



86 



THE STORY OF PRINCE FAIRYFOOT. 



[December, 



he ran, and ran, and ran, and called, and whis- 
tled, and searched ; but nowhere — nowhere was 
one of those swine to be found ! He searched for 
them for hours, going deeper and deeper into 
the forest than he had ever been before. He saw 
strange treesand strange flowers, and heard strange 
sounds, and at last the sun began to go down and 
he knew he would soon be left in the dark. His 
little feet and legs were scratched with bram- 
bles, and were so tired that they would scarcely 
carry him ; but he dared not go back to the swine- 
herd's hut without finding the swine. The only 
comfort he had on all the long way was that the 
little brook had run by his side and sung its song 
to him ; and sometimes he had stopped and bathed 
his hot face in it, and had said. " Oh, little brook, 
you are so kind to me ! You are my friend, 1 
know. It would be so lonely without you ! " 

When, at last, the sun did go down, Prince 
Fairyfoot had wandered so far that he did not 
know where he was, and he was so tired that he 
threw himself down by the brook, and hid his face 
in the flowery moss, and said : "Oh, little brook, I 
am so tired I can go ho further ! And I can never 
find them ! " 

While he was lying there in despair, he heard a 
sound in the air above him, and looked up to sec 
what it was. It sounded like a little bird in some 
trouble. And surely enough, there was a huge 
hawk darting after a plump little brown bird with 
a red breast. The little bird was uttering sharp, 
frightened cries, and Prince Fairyfoot felt so sorry 
for it that he sprung up and tried to drive the 
hawk away. The little bird saw him at once, and 
straightway flew to him, and Fairyfoot covered 
it with his cap. And then the hawk flew away in 
a great rage. 

When the hawk was gone, Fairyfoot sat down 
again and lifted his cap, expecting, of course, to see 
the brown bird with the red breast. But. instead 
of a bird, out stepped a little man, not much higher 
than your little finger — a plump little man in a 
brown suit with a bright red vest, and with a cocked 
hat on. 

" Why ! " exclaimed Fairyfoot, " I 'm sur- 
prised ! " 

" So am I ! " said the little man, cheerfully. " I 
never was more surprised in my life, except when 
my great-aunt's grandmother got into such a rage, 
and changed me into a robin-redbreast. 1 tell you, 
that surprised me ! " 

" I should think it might," said Fairyfoot. 
" Why did she do it?" 

" Mad," answered the little man. "That was 
what was the matter with her. She was always 
losing her temper like that, and turning people 
into awkward things, and then being sorry for it, 



and not being able to change them back again. 
If you are a fairy, you have to be careful. If you 'II 
believe me, that woman once turned her second 
cousin's sister-in-law into a mushroom, and some- 
body picked her and she was made into catsup — 
which is a thing no man likes to have happen in 
his family." 

" Of course not," said Fairyfoot, politely. 

'"'The difficulty is," said the little man, "that 
some fairies don't graduate. They learn how to 
turn people into things, but they don't learn how 
to unturn them ; and then, when they get mad in 
their families, — you know how it is about getting 
mad in families, — there is confusion. Yes, seri- 
ously, confusion arises. It arises. That was the 
way with my great-aunt's grandmother. She 
was not a cultivated old person, and she did not 
know how to unturn people, and now you see the 
result. Quite accidentally I trod on her favorite 
corn ; she got mad and changed me into a robin and 
regretted it ever afterward. I could only become 
myself again by a kind-hearted person's saving me 
from a great danger. You are that person. Give 
me your hand." 

Fairyfoot held out his hand. The little man 
looked at it. 

"On second thought," he said, "I can't shake 
it — it 's too large. I '11 sit on it, and talk to 
you." 

With these words, he hopped upon Fairyfoot's 
hand, and sat down, smiling and clasping his own 
hands about his tiny knees. 

" I declare, it 's delightful not to be a robin," 
he said. " Had to go about picking up worms, you 
know. Disgusting business. I always did hate 
worms. I never ate them myself — I drew the 
line there ; but I had to get them for my family." 

Suddenly he began to giggle, and to hug his 
knees up tight. 

" Do you wish to know what I 'm laughing at?" 
he asked Fairyfoot. 

"Yes," Fairyfoot answered. 

The little man giggled more than ever. 

" I 'm thinking about my wife," he said — "the 
one I had when I was a robin. A nice rage she '11 
be in when I don't come home to-night ! She '11 
have to hustle around and pick up worms for her- 
self, and for the children, too — and it serves her 
right. She had a temper that would embitter the 
life of a crow — much more a simple robin. I wore 
myself to skin and bone taking care of her and 
her brood, and how I did hate 'em ! — bare, squawk- 
ing things, always with their throats gaping open. 
They seemed to think a parent's sole duty was to 
bring worms for them." 

" It must have been unpleasant," said Fairyfoot. 

" It was more than that," said the little man. 



THE STORY OF PRINCE FAIRY FOOT, 



37 



'• It used to make my feathers stand on end. There 
was the nest, too ! Fancy being changed into a 
robin, and being obliged to build a nest at a 
moment's notice ! I never felt so ridiculous in my 
life. How was I to know how to build a nest ! 
And the worst of it was the way she went on 
about it." 

" She ?" said Fairyfoot. 

" Oh, her, you know," replied the little man, 
ungrammatically; " my wife. She 'd always been 



'" Oh, no," answered the little man. " I meant 
that it nearly killed me to think the eggs were n't 
in it at the time." 

"What did you do about the nest?" asked 
Fairyfoot. 

The little man winked in the most improper 
manner. 

" Do ?" he said. " I got mad, of course, and told 
her that if she had n't interfered, it would n't have 
happened; said it was exactly like a hen to fly 




"the next instant the drove of swine came tearing THROUGH THE BL'SHES." (see next page.) 



a robin, and she knew how to build a nest ; she 
liked to order me about, too : she was one of that 
kind. But, of course, I was n't going to own that I 
did n't know anything about nest-building ; I could 
never have done anything with her in the world, 
if I 'd let her think she knew as much as I did. 
So I just put things together in a way of my own. 
and built a nest that would have made you weep ! 
The bottom fell out of it the first night. It nearly 
killed me." 

'■ Did you fall out, too?" inquired Fairyfoot. 



around giving advice and unsettling one's mind, 
and then complain if things were n't right. I 
told her she might build the nest herself, if she 
thought she could build a better one. She did it, 
too ! " And he winked again. 

" Was it a better one ?" asked Fairyfoot. 

The little man actually winked a third time. " It 
may surprise you to hear that it was," he replied; 
■'but it did n't surprise me. By the bye," he 
added, with startling suddenness, "what's your 
name and what 's the matter with vou?" 



88 



THE STORY OF PRINCE FAIRYFOOT. 



"My name is Prince Fairyfoot," said the boy, 
"and I have lost my master's swine." 

"My name," said the little man, "is Robin 
Goodfellow, and I '11 find them for you." 

He had a tiny scarlet silk pouch hanging at his 
girdle, and he put his hand into it and drew forth 
the smallest golden whistle you ever saw. 

" Blow that," he said, giving it to Fairyfoot, 
" and take care that you don't swallow it. You 
are such a tremendous creature ! " 

Fairyfoot took the whistle and put it very deli- 
cately to his lips. He blew, and there came from 
it a high, clear sound that seemed to pierce the 
deepest depths of the forest. 

"Blow again," commanded Robin Goodfellow. 
Again Prince Fairyfoot blew, and again the pure 
clear sound rang through the trees, and the next 
instant he heard a loud rushing and tramping 
and squeaking and grunting, and all the great 
drove of swine came tearing through the bushes 
and formed themselves into a circle and stood 
staring at him as if waiting to be told what to do 
next. 

" Oh ! Robin Goodfellow ! Robin Goodfellow ! " 
cried Fairyfoot, " how grateful I am to you ! " 

"Not as grateful as I am to you," said Robin 
Goodfellow. "But for you I should be disturbing 
that hawk's digestion at the present moment, in- 
stead of which, here I am, a respectable fairy once 
more, and my late wife (though I ought not to 
call her that, for goodness knows she was early 
enough hustling me out of my nest before day- 
break, with an unpleasant proverb about the early 
bird catching the worm ! ) — I suppose I should say 
my early wife — is at this juncture a widow. Now, 
where do you live? " 

Fairyfoot told him, and told him also about the 
swineherd, and how it happened that, though he 
was a prince, he had to herd swine and live in the 
forest. 

" Well, well ! " said Robin Goodfellow, " that 
is a disagreeable state of affairs. Perhaps I can 
make it rather easier for you. You see that is a 
fairy whistle." 

" I thought so," said Fairyfoot. 

"Well," continued Robin Goodfellow, "you 
can always call your swine with it, so you will 
never be beaten again. Now are you ever 
lonely ? " 

" Sometimes I am very lonely indeed," answered 
the Prince. " No one cares for me, though I think 
the brook is sometimes sorry, and tries to tell me 
things." 

" Of course," said Robin. " They all like you. 
I Ye heard them say so." 

" Oh, have you ? " cried Fairyfoot, joyfully. 

" Yes; you never throw stones at the birds, or 



break the branches of the trees, or trample on the 
flowers, when you can help it." 

" The birds sing to me," said Fairyfoot, " and 
the trees seem to beckon to me and whisper ; and 
when I am very lonely, I lie down in the grass and 
look into the eyes of the flowers and talk to them. 
I would not hurt one of them for all the world ! " 

"Humph!" said Robin, "you are a rather 
good little fellow. Would you like to go to a 
party ? " 

" A party ! " said Fairyfoot. " What is that ? " 

" This sort of thing," said Robin ; and he jumped 
up and began to dance around and to kick up 
his heels gayly in the palm of Fairyfoot's hand. 
" Wine, you know, and cake, and all sorts of fun. 
It begins at twelve to-night, in a place the fairies 
know of; and it lasts until just two minutes and 
three seconds and a half before daylight. Would 
you like to come ? " 

" Oh," cried Fairyfoot, "I should be so happy 
if I might!" 

" Well, you may," said Robin ; " I '11 take you. 
They '11 be delighted to see any friend of mine. 
I 'm a great favorite ; of course you can easily im- 
agine that ! It was a great blow to them when I 
was changed ; such a loss, you know ! In fact, 
there were several lady fairies, who — but no mat- 
ter." And he gave a slight cough, and began to 
arrange his necktie with a disgracefully conse- 
quential air, though he was trying very hard not 
to look conceited ; and while he w ? as endeavoring 
to appear easy and gracefully careless, he began 
accidentally to hum " See the Conquering Hero 
Comes," which was not the right tune, under the 
circumstances. 

" But for you," he said next, " I could n't have 
given them the relief and pleasure of seeing me 
this evening. And what ecstasy it will be to them, 
to be sure ! I should n't be surprised if it broke 
up the whole thing. They '11 faint so, — for joy, 
you know, — just at first — that is, the ladies will. 
The men wont like it at all ; and I don't blame 
'em. I suppose I should n't like it — to see another 
fellow sweep all before him. That's what I do; 
I sweep all before me." And he waved his hand 
in such a fine large gesture that he overbalanced 
himself and turned a somersault. But he jumped 
up after it, quite undisturbed. 

" You '11 see me do it, to-night." he said, knock- 
ing the dents out of his hat — "sweep all before 
me." Then he put his hat on, and his hands on 
his hips, with a swaggering, man-of-society air. "I 
say," he said, " I 'm glad you 're going. I should 
like you to see it." 

" And I should like to see it." replied Fairyfoot. 

" Well," said Mr. Goodfellow. " you deserve it,, 
though that 's saving a great deal. You Ye re- 



1 886.] 



THE STORY OF PRINCE EAIRYFOOT. 



8 9 



stored me to them. But 
for you, even if I 'd escaped 
that hawk, I should have 
had to spend the night in 
that beastly robin's nest, 
crowded into a corner by 
those squawking things, 
and domineered over by 
her ! I was n't made for 
that ! I 'm superior to it. 
Domestic life does n't suit 
me. I was made for soci- 
ety. I adorn it. She never 
appreciated me. She could 
n't soar to it. When I 
think of the way she treated 
me!" he exclaimed, sud- 
denly getting into a rage, 
" I 've a great mind to turn 
back into a robin, and peck 
her head off! " 

" Would you like to see 
her now ? " asked Fairyfoot 
innocently. 

Mr. Goodfellow glanced 
behind him in great haste, 
and suddenly sat down. 

" No, no ! " he exclaimed 
in a tremendous hurry ; "by 
no means ! She has no del- 
icacy. And she does n't 
deserve to see me. And 
there 's a violence and un- 
certainty about her move- 
ments which is annoying 
beyond anything you can 
imagine. No, I don't want 
to see her ! I '11 let her go 
unpunished for the present. 
Perhaps it 's punishment 
enough for her to be de- 
prived of me. Just pick up 
your cap, wont you ? and 
if you see any birds lying 
about, throw it at them, 
robins particularly." 

" I think I must take the 
swine home, if you '11 ex- 
cuse me," said Fairyfoot. 
" I 'm late now." 

" Well, let me sit on your 
shoulder and I '11 go with 
you, and show you a short 
way home," said Goodfel- 
low ; "I know all about it, 
so you need n't think about 
yourself again. In fact, 




'"let me sit on vour shoulder, AND I 'll go with V 



OU, SAID ROBIN GOODFELLOW." 



9 o 



INTERNATIONAL. 



[December, 



wc '11 talk about the party. Just blow your whis- 
tle, and the swine will go ahead." 

Fairyfoot did so, and the swine rushed through 
the forest before them, and Robin Goodfellow 
perched himself on the prince's shoulder and 
chatted as they went. 

it had taken Fairyfoot hours to reach the place 
where he had found Robin, but somehow it seemed 
to him only a very short time before they came to 
the open place near the swineherd's hut ; and the 
path they had walked in had been so pleasant and 
flowery that it had been delightful all the way. 

" Now," said Robin when they stopped, " if you 
will come here to-night at twelve o'clock, when 
the moon shines under this tree, you will find me 
waiting for you. Now I 'm going. Good-bye ! " 
And he was gone before the last word was quite 
finished. 

Fairyfoot went toward the hut, driving the swine 
before him, and suddenly he saw the swineherd 
come out of his house and stand staring stupidly at 
the pigs. He was a very coarse, hideous man with 

(To h 



bristling yellow hair, and little eyes, and a face 
rather like a pig's, and he always looked stupid, but 
just now he looked more stupid than ever. He 
seemed dumb with surprise. 

" What 's the matter with the swine ? " he asked 
in his hoarse voice, which was rather piglike too. 

" I don't know," answered Fairyfoot, feeling a 
little alarmed. ''What is the matter with them?" 

'■ They are four times fatter and five times bigger 
and six times cleaner and seven times heavier and 
eight times handsomer than they were when you 
took them out," the swineherd said. 

"I Ye done nothing to them," said Fairyfoot. 
" They ran away, but they came back again." 

The swineherd went lumbering back into the 
hut and called his wife. " Come, and look at the 
swine," he said. 

And then the woman came out, and stared first 
at the swine and then at Fairyfoot. 

" He has been with the fairies," she said at last 
to her husband ; "or it is because he is a king's 
son. We must treat him better if he can do won- 
ders like that." 
ontiHued. ) 



INTERNATIONAL. 

She came from a round black dot on the map,- 
This dear little girl, and she 's called a Jap. 
Maybe my sister will show it to you : — 
The very place where this little girl grew. 



I wish she knew some American words, 

Such as " How do you do ? " and " trees," and 

" birds." 
I 'd like to talk with her ever so much — 
But she can 't tell a thing that I say from Dutch. 



Well, our dollies will get us acquainted to-day 

If she II only come out in the Park to play ! 

If it were not for nodding, and taking their 

hands, 
We could never know people from foreign lands. 



^ 



4. 










1 . M^fiArjhr 





1886.] 



A FORTUNATE OPENING. 



91 



A FORTUNATE OPENING. 
By Frank R. Stockton. 




. 
































f^ 






." ~~ % 


^ 




\\\ 




\' : 




i 


- ~ 




-i 



ELL, boys," said Mr. Bartlett 
to a party of his young- 
friends who gathered 
around him after supper, 
''I am going to tell you 
a story, since you are so 
anxious to hear one, and it 
will be a story of adven- 
ture; but it will have no 
boy hero. Its heroes are 
two persons whom you 
know very well, but I do 
not think the story will be 
less interesting on that 
account." 

One of the young peo- 
ple here remarked that he 
liked stories of adven- 
ture about grown people 
better than those about 
boys, because boys gen- 
iji^gxs -^ ~.s _^ ^-s^ava/® era iiy were not allowed 

to have such good ad- 
ventures as grown people could have. 

" That may or may not be," said Mr. Bartlett. 
" But to go on with my story: 

'• When I was about thirty-five years old, and that 
was a number of years ago, I failed in business, 
and became quite poor. To add to my trouble, 
my health failed also; and it was considered advis- 
able that I should take a trip to one of the West 
Indian islands in order to gain strength before 
beginning business again. My wife went with 
me, but our little boy was left behind with his 
grandmother. 

" Our affairs were soon arranged. We collected 
money enough for a trip of a few months, and, soon 
after, we set sail for an isle of the sea. This island 
w-as a beautiful one, in a charming climate, and here 
we lived for three happy months, but when at last 
the time came for us to go, we were perfectly sat- 
isfied to do so ; and we felt that the object of the 
trip had been attained. 

"We left the island on the steamer Joseph 
Barker, which touched at our island on a home- 
ward trip from South America ; stopping to leave 
a party of scientific men who had made a special 
contract to be landed there ; and, as the regular 
steamer would not leave for a week or longer, we 
were very glad to take passage in the Barker. 

" We sailed over delightful summer seas for a 



day and a night and another day and a part of a 
night, and then something, very mysterious to me, 
occurred. We ran into a great ship, or rather, 
the ship — which was under full sail — ran into us. 
The reason why this seemed mysterious to me was 
that there were hundreds of miles of unobstructed 
ocean on each side of us, in any strip of which, 
forty yards wide, the two vessels could have passed 
in safety ; why, therefore, unless there is some 
mysterious attraction between vessels at sea, we 
should have happened to select the same spot of 
water for occupation at the same time, I could 
not imagine. 

"The shock of the collision was tremendous; 
everybody woke up instantly, and many were tum- 
bled out of their berths. 

" My wife and I were soon dressed and on deck. 
There we found a great commotion. The general 
idea seemed to be that we had sunk the ship. Im- 
mediately after the collision, the steamer -had 
backed away, and the two vessels were separated, 
but where was the ship now ? It was very dark, but 
certainly, if she were above water, she would have 
hung out lights and made signs of distress or de- 
sire to relieve distress. But she was not to be seen. 

" When our steamer was examined, however, 
it was found that the bow of the ship had struck 
us on the port side, just aft the foremast, and 
had made a hole as big as a front door. No 
one now thought of assisting the other ship. She 
was, probably, but slightly injured, and it was to 
her that we must look for help, for it was certain 
that our ship could not keep afloat long with such 
a hole as that in its side. Indeed, reports from 
below stated that the ship was rapidly filling. 

"There were not many passengers, and we 
gathered together in a knot on the upper deck; 
some were very much frightened, and all anxious 
to know what was to be done. A tall gentleman 
who was traveling alone told us what would prob- 
ably be done. He said rockets would be sent up 
to indicate our position to the ship; a gun would 
be fired; the crew, and perhaps the passengers, 
would be set to work at the pumps; the donkey- 
engine would be assigned similar duty, and imme- 
diate efforts would be made to stop up the hole. 
We saw signs, or what we supposed to be signs, of 
intentions on the part of the crew to do some of 
these things ; but we could not understand what was 
going on, in the hurry and confusion on the decks. 

"The tall gentleman left us to make some 



9 2 



A FORTUNATE OPENING. 



[December, 



suggestions to the captain, who, however, scolded at 
him in such a way that he came back to us, and 
was just in the midst of some very ungracious 
remarks when so unearthly a yell issued from the 
escape-pipe behind us that several of us thought 
the boilers had burst. But the tall man, ceasing 
his complaints, screamed in our ears that the en- 
gineer was merely letting off the steam. 

" There is no doubt that the captain and the offi- 
cers tried to do all that they could, but it was not 
long before there were evident signs of a panic. 
It was too dark, even with the lights on deck, for us 
to see much, but we soon found that there was a 
general rush for the boats. Then we also rushed. 

" The confusion was now so great, and the deaf- 
ening noise from the steam-pipe made it so impos- 
sible to hear any orders, if any were given, while 
the darkness made everything seem so obscure 
and uncertain, that I can not describe how we got 
into the boats. I know I hurried my wife to a 
large boat not very far from us. which was just 
about to be lowered, but it was already so full of 
people that there was no possible chance for us to 
get into it. I then ran aft, and found a small empty 
boat at which two men were working. Without a 
word, I helped my wife into this, and the two men 
soon got in, and, one at the bow and the other at 
the stern, they let it down to the water. Each man 
then took an oar and began to pull away from the 
steamer as fast as possible. 

14 I suggested that we might take some one else 
into the boat, but one of the men asked me if 1 
wanted to stay by a sinking craft until it should 
sink and carry us down with it : and then they 
pulled away even harder than before. 

" My wife had said little during all these fear- 
ful scenes. She had done exactly as I had told 
her ; our action accordingly had been expeditious, 
and with as little flurry as was possible, under the 
circumstances. Unrolling a bundle of shawls, 
which I had thrown into the boat, I now began to 
make my wife warm and comfortable. This action 
attracted the attention of the men. We were very 
close to one another in the boat, and our eyes 
having become accustomed to the darkness, we 
could see one another tolerably well. 

'"Was that bundle only shawls?' asked the 
man nearer us. I answered that it was. I had picked 
up the shawls as we ran out of the stateroom, 
thinking it might be cool on deck, and had rolled 
them up, and kept them under my arm until we 
were about to get into the boat. I knew they 
would be needed. 

" The men now stopped rowing for a minute. 
One of them took up a little water-keg which was 
in the bow of the boat, and shook it. 

" ' Xothin' there,' he said. Then some remarks. 



which I did not catch, were made about my bundle. 
I am quite sure that they thought it contained 
some sort of provision for what might be an ex- 
tended boat-trip. With their heads together, the 
two men said a few words, and, after having 
listened attentively for some minutes, they began 
again to row with their utmost strength. Before 
long they stopped again to listen, and then I heard 
the sound of oars. They pulled on, and we soon 
could make out a large boat, not far ahead of us. 

" ' That 's not the one ! ' said one of the sailors, 
turning around. ' That 's the fust mate's boat, 
an' loaded up. It 's the purser's boat we want. 
That is n't half full.' 

" So on they went, stopping every now and then 
to listen, and it was not long before we heard oars 
again, at which the men in our boat pulled with 
renewed vigor. I wondered how they knew in 
which direction to row, so as to be likely to fall in 
with the other boats ; but I did not ask, for I did 
not believe the men would stop to answer me. I 
supposed, however, that boats' crews, on such 
occasions, might prefer to go with the wind. 
There was enough wind for us to feel it very 
plainly. And now we began to near another boat, 
although it was hard work pulling up to it. I 
wondered, again, why they all rowed so hard. 
They could not be trying to make any particular 
point. As soon as we were close enough, one of 
our men hailed the other boat. ' Hullo ! ' he 
cried, ' Room for anybody else aboard?' 

"'How many?' a voice called out. 

" I instantly rose in my seat. 'Four,' I shouted. 

" 'Can't do it,' came back the answer. 'You 'd 
swamp us.' 

"Our men made no answer to this, but, bend- 
ing to their oars, they pulled like madmen. The 
other boat seemed trying to get away from us, 
but if this were so, it was a useless effort, for we 
rapidly overhauled it. The moment we came 
near enough, our bow-oarsman reached out and 
seized the stern of the other boat. Then both men 
dropped their oars, and, in a second, it seemed to 
me, they scrambled into it. As they did so, our 
boat fell behind. I rose to my feet and called 
out to the other boat to stop, that there were two 
more in our boat. But no voice answered us, and 
the boat disappeared in the gloom. For a minute 
or two, I heard the sound of oars, and then even 
that was lost. We were left alone. 

"For a time, neither of us could speak. And 
then my wife began to cry. The cruel desertion 
by our oarsmen broke down her strong spirit. I 
tried to comfort her, although I was glad she could 
not see my face, or know what despair I felt. I 
told her the men could do us no good, and that we 
were just as well off without them. 



i886.] 



A F O R T U N ATE OPENING. 



" 'You can row,' she said, a little re-assured. 

"'Oh yes!' I replied, and I sat down in the 
place of one of the men, and took the oars, which, 
fortunately, remained in the rowlocks. I began to 
row, although I had no idea in what direction I 
should go. I could not catch the other boats, and 
it would be of no advantage if I could. The near- 
est land must surely be several hundred miles 
away, and, besides, for all I knew. I might be row- 
ing toward the Straits of Gibraltar. But the exer- 
cise kept me warm, and that was something. I was 
not thickly clad, and the wind began to feel quite 
cool. My wife was warmly wrapped up, and that 
was the only comfort I had. And there we were in 
the darkness; I gently rowing, and she seated in 
the stern with her face bent down on her knees, sob- 
bing. Once I heard her say: 'My poor child!' 

''The sea was moderately smooth, although there 
were long swelling waves, on which we rose and 
fell. The wind was evidently decreasing. 

"After a time, my wife raised her head, — I had 
been talking to her, but she had seldom spoken. — 
and she said : ' Do you think there is any chance 
at all for us ? ' 

" 'Oh, yes,' I replied; 'as soon as it is daylight 
we have a great many chances of being picked up. 
Perhaps that ship will come back and cruise about 
in search of us. She probably had to take a long 
tack before she could return, and she could not ex- 
pect to come back to the same spot in the dark.' 

" She made no answer to this, although I think it 
must have encouraged her a little, and for a long 
time we sat in silence ; at last she went to sleep. I 
was very glad to find she was sleeping, for, as she 
lay upon her side, with her head resting on her 
arm, I knew that, for a time at least, she would 
forget her despair and our little boy at home. 

" But I felt all the more lonely and desolate, now 
that she slept. No sound could be heard but the 
plash of the waves, and nothing could be seen 
but a little water around the boat. The sky was 
covered with an even mass of motionless clouds. 
For some time after we had left the steamer, I could 
hear the sound of the escaping steam. But that 
was not to be heard now. Perhaps we were too 
far away, or perhaps she had gone down. And 
then I thought, with horror, that perhaps she had 
not yet sunk, and that she might come slowly 
drifting down upon us, and then, rolling over on our 
boat, sink us with herself to the dreadful depths 
below. This idea made me so nervous that I could 
not help looking behind me, fearing I should see 
above me the great black hull, with the masts and 
spars bending down toward us. 

" At last I too went to sleep. My head dropped 
on my breast, and I sat, with the oars still in my 
hands, and slept, I know not how long. I was 



awakened by an exclamation from my wife. Start- 
ing up, I gazed around. It was daylight, the sky 
was still cloudy, and, as far as 1 could see, there 
stretched an expanse of dull green water, rising 
and falling in long and gentle swells. 

" But my wife was sitting up very straight, gazing 
past me, with her eyes opened wider than I had 
ever seen them. She had evidently just awakened. 

" ' Look there ! ' she said, pointing over my 
shoulder. 

" I turned quickly, but saw nothing. But then, 
as we rose upon a swell, I distinctly saw a vessel. 
It seemed to me to be about half a mile away, but 
it was probably farther. 

'"We 're saved!' I shouted, and I took hold 
of the oars and began to pull with all the vigor 
that was in me. I wanted to say something, but 
remember thinking that every word would waste 
breath, and I must row, row, row. It would be 
death to let that vessel get away from us. 

" My wife was as much excited as I was. 

" ' Shall I wave something?' she cried. I nodded, 
and she drew out her handkerchief, and waved it 
over her head. 

" ' If I only had a pole,' she said, 'or something 
to tie it to!' 

" There were two oars behind me, but I could not 
stop rowing to reach back to get them. She 
stood up to wave her signal, but I made her sit 
down again. I felt I must speak then. 

" ' You must not stand up,' I said ; ' you will fall 
overboard. Is she coming this way ? ' 

" ' I think she is,' was the reply. ' She is nearer 
to us.' And with both hands she continued wildly 
to wave the handkerchief, while I rowed on. 

' ' Suddenly she stopped wavin g. For an instant, 
I ceased rowing and looked at her. 

"'Go on!' she said, and on I went. Once, 
when I rowed a little out of the right direction, she 
told me of my error. She looked straight ahead, 
neither waving her handkerchief nor saying any- 
thing. 

" 'Are we near ? ' I said, for my arms were grow- 
ing lame with the unaccustomed work. 

" ' Quite near,' she said. ' Row a little more to 
the left. Yes, I knew it ; it is our steamer ! I can 
see the name.' 

" I quickly turned. We were within a couple of 
hundred yards of the vessel. It was our steamer. 
1 too could read the words : Joseph Barker ' on 
the stern. She had not sunk yet. 

" I don't know how my wife bore up under this 
terrible disappointment. But she did. She even 
smiled weakly when she said we might have staid 
on board all night, and have taken the boats 
by daylight — if we had only known. 

"The dread of the ship which had haunted me 



94 



A F UkTUNATE OPENING. 



[December, 



during the night had passed away. 1 jdid not care 
very much whether she sunk and carried us down 
with her, or not. It was a relief to see anything 
that reminded me of humanity on that desolate, 
lonely sea. I rowed up quite close to her. 

" ' Perhaps there is some one left on board,' said 
my wife, and she and I both shouted as loud as we 
could ; but no answer came from the ship. 

"Then I rowed around her, and we saw the 
frightful hole in her side. While we were looking 
at it my wife said : 

" ' Do you know that I should just as soon be on 
board that ship as to be in this little boat ! I don't 
believe she will sink a bit sooner than we shall.' 

"'I was thinking of that,' I replied. 'The 
lower edge of the hole in her side is four feet from 
the water-level when she rolls this way, and nine 
or ten when she rolls the other way. It must have 
been because the waves were high last night that 
the water came in. As long as the sea is quiet, I 
don't believe she will sink at all.' 

" I then rowed up close to the vessel and exam- 
ined her injuries as well as I could. The side of the 
vessel, which was a wooden one, did not seem to be 
damaged below the tremendous gap which the bow 
of the other ship had made. The sheathing, as 1 
believe the outside board; of a ship's hull are called, 
seemed tight enough between the water-line and 
the hole. 

" I agreed with my wife that it would be much 
better to be on board the steamer than to remain 
in our little boat, especially as we began to be hun- 
gry. Even if a storm should come on. we should 
feel safer in the larger craft. So I set about trying 
to get on board. There were some ropes, with 
blocks and hooks, hanging from the davits from 
which the boats had been lowered, and, having 
managed to get hold of one of these, I thought 1 
might climb up it to the deck. But my wife was 
strongly opposed to this, for, when she saw how the 
ropes swung as the ship rolled, she declared that 
I should never go up one of them. And when I 
came to try the ropes and found that there were four 
of them together, passing through a pulley above, 
and that, if I should not pull on them equally, I 
might come down with a run, I gave up this plan. 

" Suddenly 1 had a happy thought. I rowed 
to one of the forward davits, and fastened the 
hook that hung from it to the bow of our boat. 
I then paddled the boat around until we were 
under, and very near to, the fractured aperture, 
which was not far from the forward davits. 

" ' What are you going to do ? ' asked my wife. 
' We ought not to go so near the ship. She will 
push us under as she rolls.' 

"'I wish to go still nearer,' said I. 'I don't 
believe there is any danger, with that easy rolling. 



I wish to get in through that hole. Then I '11 make 
my way on deck.' 

"'But what shall /do?' asked my wife, anx- 
iously. ' I can never climb in there ! ' 

" ' No, indeed ! ' said I. ' I don't intend to let 
you try. When I get on deck I '11 haul you up.' 

" ' But can you do it ? ' she asked, a little doubt- 
fully. 

" 'Certainly I can,' I answered; and I immedi- 
ately began to prepare for boarding the ship. 

" First, I tied two of the shawls around my wife, 
just under her arms, making the knots as secure 
as I could. Then I showed her how to fasten the 
hook that held the boat, into these shawls, when the 
time came. I insisted that she should be sure to 
hook it into both shawls, so that if one gave way 
there might be another to depend upon. I did not 
like to leave my wife alone in the boat, but there 
seemed to be no help for it ; and, as it could not 
float away, there was no danger if she was careful. 

" When I had given her all the necessary direc- 
tions, I paddled the boat as near to the hole as I 
could with safety, and then, standing up, I waited 
until the rolling of the ship brought the lower 
edge of the aperture within my reach, when I 
seized it, and in a moment was raised high out of 
the little boat as the ship rolled back again. I 
heard my wife scream, but I knew it was only on 
account of my apparently dangerous rise in the 
air, and I lost no time in drawing myself up and 
scrambling into the hole. It was only by the 
exercise of my utmost strength and activity that I 
did this. It would have been better if I had made 
a spring from the boat as soon as I had taken 
hold, but I did not think of that. Fortunately, the 
planking on which I was hanging was firm, and I 
quickly made my way in between the splintered 
boards and timbers. As soon as I was safely inside, 
standing on something, — I knew not what, — I put 
my head out of the hole and called down to my 
wife. She was in the boat, all right, a short dis- 
tance from me, with her face as white as her hand- 
kerchief. 

"'I was sure you would never get in!' she 
cried. ' I knew you would drown ! ' 

" ' But you see I did n't,' said I. ' It 's all 
right now. I '11 hurry on deck, and have you up 
in no time.' 

" For a moment I thought of trying to help her 
in through the hole, but such an attempt would 
have been very hazardous, and I did not propose 
it. She could not have brought the boat up prop- 
erly, and would probably have fallen overboard 
in attempting to reach me. So I told her to sit 
perfectly still until I saw her again, and I with- 
drew into the interior of the vessel. I found my- 
self in the upper part of the hold, among freight 



A FORTUNATE OPENING. 



95 



and timber and splinters, and many obstructions 
of various kinds, but it was not dark. Light came 
through the hole in the ship's side and also from 
above. Making my way further into the interior, 
I saw that the light from above came from the 
open hatchway in the forward deck. This had 
probably been opened after the accident, with the 
idea of lightening the vessel by throwing out part 
of the cargo. Or it may have been that the men 
came down that way to investigate the damage 
done by the collision. It matters not. The hatch- 
way was open, and through it I could probably 
make my way on deck. 

" I was surprised to find no water in the part of 
the vessel where I entered. I expected to have to 
wade or swim after I was inside. But the water 
which had come in was probably far beneath me. 
The lower part of the hold might be full for all I 
knew. I had no difficulty in climbing out of the 
hold. In one of the great upright beams which 
supported the corner of the hatchway, there was a 
series of pegs, by the aid of which I easily mounted 
to the deck. There I stopped for a moment, and 
looked about me. Everything appeared so deso- 
late and lonely that my heart sank. But there 
was no time for the indulgence of melancholy. I 
hurried to the upper deck, where the davits were, 
and looked over. 

" ' Hurrah ! ' I cried, ' I 'm all right ! ' 

"'I wish I were,' came back the plaintive an- 
swer from the figure in the little boat. 

"'You shall be, directly,' I said. 'Wait one 
moment, and I '11 haul you up.' 

" I now directed my wife to unhook the block 
from the boat, and to fasten the hook securely in 
her shawls — in the way I had shown her. She 
immediately rose, stepped from seat to seat, and, 
unfastening the hook, coolly stood up in the boat 
to attach it to her shawls. 

" I was horror-stricken ! ' Sit down ! ' I cried ; 
' if you lose your balance, you will be overboard 
in an instant. You can't stand up in a boat, espe- 
cially when it 's rolling about like that.' 

"She sat down immediately, but the thought 
of her dangerous position made me feel sick for 
a moment. Would she ever be safe on deck 
beside me ? 

" She now called up that she was ready, and 
that the hook was all right. I then took hold of 
the upper end of the rope which ran through the 
pulleys in the blocks, and began to haul it in. 
This soon produced a pressure on the shawls, 
and my wife declared that if I pulled much 
harder she would have to stand up. 

'"Very well!' I called down, 'you may stand 
up as soon as you please, now. I have you, tight. 
You may hold on to the block or the hook, if you 



like, but don't touch the ropes. Now I am going 
to haul you up.' 

" I said this very confidently, but I did not feel 
confident. I was terribly afraid that I could not 
do it. I put the rope over my shoulder and began 
to walk across the deck. As the vessel gave a 
roll, I felt that I had my wife hanging at the other 
end of that rope ! Now I must do it ! If the 
deck had been stationary, I might have pressed 
on and slowly pulled her up; but the first time the 
vessel rolled over toward me I should have fallen 
backward had I not grasped the railing which ran 
across the deck in front of the pilot-house. This 
railing was my salvation. With the rope over my 
right shoulder and wrapped around my right hand, 
I clutched the railing with my left hand, and step 
by step, and clutch by clutch, I forced myself 
along. Once I thought of my wife, dangling and 
swinging above the water, but I banished the 
idea — my business was to pull, and keep pulling. 

''When the vessel rolled toward me so that I 
was walking up a steep hill, the strain was terri- 
ble, but I had advantages when it rolled the other 
way, and I could throw much of mv weight 
against the rope. 

" Now the rope had run out a long way. I 
was nearly to the other side of the deck. She 
ought to be up. I glanced back, but there was 
no sign of her. But I knew she had not fallen 
off. I could feel her weight. Indeed, it seemed 
greater than before. Could I, by some accidental 
attachment, be hauling up the boat ? If so, there 
was no help for it. I must keep on hauling. 

"Again I looked back, and, oh, happy sight! 
I saw the top of my wife's back-hair just showing 
above the side. I gave one powerful pull ; I made 
the line fast to the railing, and then I ran back. 
There she hung, with her whole head above the 
side ! I ought to have pulled her up higher, but 
I could not go back to do it now. So I reached 
over and lifted her in. This effort exhausted what 
was left of my strength. I managed to take the 
hook from the shawls, and then we sank down 
beside each other on the deck. 

" In about half an hour I went below to get my 
wife some water. I found water in the cooler in 
the dining-room, and glasses by it. As I filled 
one of these, I thought of the curious convenience 
of all this. Here we were, alone on the ocean, and 
yet I could go downstairs and get my wife a glass 
of water as easily as if I were in my own house. 

" ' Were you frightened when I was drawing 
you up?' I asked my wife. 

" ' Frightened ! ' she answered, ' I almost died ! 
The boat went from under me as soon as the 
steamer rolled and lifted me up, and then when 
she rolled back. I was sure I would be dipped into 



9 6 



A FORTUNATE OPENING. 



[December, 



the water. But I was n't. And then, when I 
looked down, and saw nothing but that black 
water moving and yawning there beneath me, and 
thought of falling into it if any accident should 
happen. I could not bear to see it, and shut my 
eyes. I bumped against the vessel every time it 
rolled, but I did n't mind that. They were gentle 
bumps.' 

"At this moment I happened to think of the 
little boat. Without attracting my wife's attention, 
I looked over the side. It had floated away and 
was entirely out of our reach. I ought to have 
secured it. But it was of no use to regret the acci- 
dent now ; and. as we began to feel that we ought 
to have some food, I proposed we should go below 
to look for some. We easily found the kitchen 
and a pantry, where there were bread and butter 
and a variety cf cold meats and vegetables, appar- 
ently left from the previous day's dinner. We did 
not stop to make much of a choice of these eata- 
bles, but stood up and ate bread and butter and 
cold meat until we were satisfied. 

" 'It is astonishing how hungry we are,' said 
my wife, 'considering that it is now but very little 
after our usual breakfast- time.' 

" But I did not think it astonishing after all we 
had gone through. The strange thing was that 
we should have so much to eat. When we had 
finished our meal and had satisfied our thirst at the 
water-cooler, we made a tour of the ship — that is, 
of the more accessible parts of it. We looked into 
every stateroom. All were empty. We made sure 
that there was not a soul on board but ourselves. 

" When we went into our stateroom, we found 
everything as we left it ; and the sight of the 
berths was so tempting to our tired bodies that we 
agreed to turn in and take a nap. It was late in 
the afternoon when we awoke ; and when I looked 
at my watch and jumped to the floor, I felt con- 
science-stricken at having lost so much time in 
sleep. What vessels might not have sailed near 
enough to us to have seen a signal of distress, if I 
had but put one out ? And yet, I think that if any 
vessel had seen the Joseph Barker, it would have 
known that something was the matter with her. 

"I determined not to run the risk of another 
collision when night should come on. I found the 
lamps in the dining-foom empty, and supposed 
that all the lamps on board had probably burned 
out, and therefore set about looking for oil to 
fill some of them. I found a can after a deal of 
searching, and filled a couple of the dining-room 
lamps. I would have lighted the red and green 
lights that were burned on deck at night, but they 
were difficult to get at, and I thought I might not 
know how to manage them. So I contented myself 
with hanging a large lantern in the rigging near 



the bow, and another one at the stern. These were 
not placed very high, but I thought they would be 
sufficiently visible. The larger lantern I found in 
the engine-room, and, to my astonishment, it was 
burning when I took it down. It seemed the only 
sign of life on board. 

" By the time I had hung out my lights, I found 
that my wife had prepared supper, which she had 
spread on the captain's end of the long table in 
the dining-saloon. She had no tea or coffee, for 
there was no fire in the kitchen, but she had 
arranged everything very nicely, and we really had 
a pleasant meal, considering the circumstances. 

" We did not sit up very long, for the steamer 
looked extremely lonely by lamplight — and it was 
so very little lamplight, too. 

"The next day, when we went on deck, and 
looked out on the lonely ocean, not a sign could 
we see of sail or vessel. We spent a great part 
of the morning in putting up a signal of distress. 
This consisted of a sheet from one of the berths, 
which I fastened to the halyards on the mainmast 
and ran up as high as it would go. There was not 
much wind, but it fluttered out quite well. 

" We now began to consider our chances of 
safety in case we were not soon rescued. I thought, 
and my wife agreed with me, that if the sea re- 
mained smooth, the vessel would continue to float; 
but what would happen if the waves rose, and 
dashed into the great hole in her side, we scarcely 
dared to think. We both believed we ought to do 
something, but what to do we could not determine. 
The small boat was gone, and our fate was joined 
to that of the ship. I had heard of fastening a large 
sail over a leak or break in a vessel, so as to keep 
out the water to some extent ; but a sail big 
enough to cover that hole would be far too heavy 
for my wife and me to manage. 

"We thought and talked the matter over all day, 
and the next morning we considered it even more 
seriously, for the wind had risen considerably. It 
blew from the south, and, as our vessel lay with her 
bow to the west, — I knew this from the compass 
on deck, — the waves frequently broke against her 
injured side, and sometimes, when she rolled over 
that way, the spray did come into the aperture. 

" ' If we could steer her around,' said my wife, 
' so that the other side would be toward the wind, 
it would be better, would n't it? Can't we go into 
the pilot's house, and turn the wheel, and steer 
her around ? ' 

"'No,' said I, "we could n't do that. You 
can't steer a vessel unless she is under way — is 
going, that is.' 

"'And there 's no way, I suppose, that we 
could make her go,' she continued. 

" I laughed. The idea of our making this great 



1886.1 



A FORTUNATE UPENING. 



97 



vessel move was rather ridiculous. But my wife 
did not laugh. Walking about the ship, we went 
into the engine-room. We looked at the bright 
steel cranks and bars and all the complicated 
machinery, now motionless and quiet, and down 
through the grating on which we stood, to the 



"'You would probably blow us up,' she re- 
marked, ' and so it is just as well as it is.' 

"But later in the clay she said, 'Why don't 
we put up a sail ? I have an idea about a sail. If 
we put one up that ran lengthways with the vessel, 
like the sail on a sailboat, and the wind kept blow- 




'THE GULF STREAM GOES TO ENGLAND, DOES N'T IT? DO YOU SUPPOSE IT WILL DRIFT US AS FAR AS THAT?" 



great furnaces far beneath us, where the coals 
were all dead and cold. 

" ' This looks as if it were all in order,' she said, 
'and yet I suppose you could n't set it going.' 

'' I assured her that I certainly could not. I 
did not know anything about an engine, and even 
if the fires were burning and the boilers full of 
steam, I could never hope to turn handles and 
work levers so that the great wheels would go 
around and move the vessel. 

VOL. XIV.— 7. 



ing on this side of us, it would blow the ship over 
a little sideways, as sailboats are when they are 
sailing, and that would raise the hole up so that 
the water would n't get in.' 

"'It might act that way,' I said. 'But we 
could n't put up a sail.' 

" • Why not ? ' she asked. 

" 'We 're not strong enough, for one reason,' 
said I. ' And don't know how, for another.' 

" ' Well, let 's go and look at them,' said she. 



9 s 



A FORTUNATE OPENING. 



[December, 



'"As it was certainly better to move about and 
occupy our minds and bodies, instead of sitting 
still and thinking of all sorts of dangers, we went 
to look at the sails. There were two masts to the 
steamer. On the mainmast was a large sail, like 
a schooner's mainsail, which, I was sure, we could 
not raise a foot. On the foremast was a square 
sail, much smaller, and this, my wife thought, we 
certainly ought to be able to set. I was not so 
sure about it. The difficulty in our case would 
be to get the sail loose from the yard to which it 
was furled. I had seen the sail set, and knew there 
was no lower yard, the bottom of the sail being 
fastened by ropes at the corners to the vessel. 1 
suppose it is easy enough for sailors to go out along 
the yards and untie — or whatever they call it — the 
sails, but I could not do it. Nor did my wife wish 
me to try, when she saw what was necessary. 

"'If we had the yard on deck,' she said, 'we 
could untie the sail and then haul it up again.' 

" I knew this would not do, for even if we could 
have let the yard down, we could never have hoisted 
it up again, and so, after a good deal of examina- 
tion and cogitation, I told my wife that we should 
have to be content to give it up. 

" For the rest of that day we said no more about 
setting sails, but the desire to do the thing had so 
grown upon me that I got up very early the next 
morning without waking my wife and went on 
deck. To my delight I found that the wind had 
gone down almost entirely. Then, in great fear 
lest my wife and the wind should rise, I mounted 
the shrouds, carefully and slowly made my way out 
on each side of the yard as I had often seen sailors 
make their way, and, with a large knife which 1 
found on deck, I cut all the ropes which confined 
the sail, so that it gradually fell down to its full 
length. I could not unfasten the knots nor com- 
prehend the turnings of the ropes that held the 
sail, and even to cut them was a work of time and 
danger to me. But at last it hung down, slowly 
waving and curling with the motion of the ship ; 
for the swell on the sea still continued. I descend- 
ed, trembling with the exertion and excitement. 
By ropes attached to the lower corners of the sail, 
I loosely fastened it to the deck, so that it should 
be under control in case the wind arose, and then 
I went aft. I met my wife coming up the com- 
panion-way. To her inquiries as to what I had 
been doing, I told her I had been setting the fore- 
sail, at which she went forward to see how I had 
done it. When she came back she found me lying 
down on a sofa in the dining-saloon. 

" ' And so you went out on that yard and undid 
those ropes?' she said. 



" I answered that I was obliged to do so, or I 
could not have set the sail. It is not necessary to 
report the lecture that ensued, but it was a long 
and a serious one. When all was over, I promised 
never to do anything of the kind again, and then 
we had breakfast. 

" From the time when we boarded the steamer 
we had not failed, at every convenient moment 
during the daytime, to look for sails. But we 
had seen but two, and those were very far off, and 
had soon disappeared. Our signal of distress was 
kept flying; but, after a time, we began to wonder 
whether or not it was a signal of distress. 




I CLT ALL THE ROPES THAT CONFINED THE SAIL. 



"'Perhaps a white flag on the highest mast 
means that everything 's all right,' remarked my 
wife. 

"I did not know how such a flag would be 
regarded, but thought that if any vessel could 
catch sight of our steamer rolling about without 
any smoke or sails, we would need no signal of 
distress. I wondered that we did not meet other 
vessels. I had thought there were so many ships 
on the ocean that, in the course of a day or two, 
we could not help meeting at least one. But I 
worked out a theory on the subject. 

" • We are probably,' I said to my wife, ' in the 
Gulf Stream, which flows northward. Vessels 
going south avoid this stream, and therefore we 
do not meet them.' 

" ' But shall we never meet a vessel? ' asked my 
wife. ' The Gulf Stream goes to England, does n't 
it? Do you suppose it will drift us as far as 
that ? ' 

•' 'Oh,' I said, 'I have no doubt there will be 
vessels crossing the stream before long. Or one 
may overtake us.' " 



( To be concluded. . 



HOW A GREAT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



99 



_ARagit?g,Roarin£>Lioi2,of aLamb-cLevouriraa Kind, 
jA&formecL Q,r2cl led a sweet, submissive life-. 
Tor with face all steeped it? smiles _. 

tie propelled a Lamb for miles. 




HOW A GREAT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 
By Theodore R. Davis. 



A CERTAIN brave and prominent general in the 
late war always insisted that the best and safest 
place from which to view a battle was just behind the 
central line of one of the engaging armies — if the 
spectator did not mind the shells and minie-balls. 

The general died without seeing one of the battle 
panoramas — or " cycloramas," as they are some- 
times called — now so frequently exhibited in our 
larger cities. In one of these, he could have stood 
in the best possible place, without considering the 
question of safety or of minding shells and minie- 
balls, however hotly the battle might be raging all 
around him. For so skillfully is the foreground 
blended into the painted scene upon the canvas, 
that, but for the silence, the spectator seems actu- 
ally to stand in the midst of the real battle. 

It is always interesting to visit an old battle- 
ground. The veteran who, years before, was 
engaged in the actual conflict, and the tourist who 
has read and re-read the story of the desperate 
fight, alike find much pleasure in standing upon 
the actual field and endeavoring to locate the 



contending forces or trying to trace out the lines 
of advance, attack, or retreat. 

The visitor to those old battle-fields, however, 
finds to-day only slight signs of conflict. Few of 
the old roads can be traced ; towns have grown into 
cities ; pleasant farms have overgrown the earth- 
works ; and forests stand in the fields which, years 
ago, were marked with the smoke and strife of 
battle. The aim of the battle panorama is to re- 
produce not only the field of the conflict, as it 
was at the time, but also the most striking events 
of the battle as they would have appeared to a 
spectator from the same standpoint. 

Material. 

The first step, after selecting the subject of a 
battle panorama, is to collect all obtainable sketch- 
es, records, and photographs relating to it. These 
are studied with great care by the leading artists 
engaged for the work, who then go to the real field 
of battle, where, for a month at least, they make 



IOO 



HOW A GREAT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



[December, 



sketches of the ground from some commanding 
point, The spot thus chosen for studying the 
field may have been overgrown with trees since 
the days of battle, but the lookout is usually 
so well selected that it is possible to construct a 
plan of the landscape as it formerly appeared, and 
so to make a sketch of the battle-ground precisely 
as it was at the time of the fight. I have found, 
too, in my own experience, that in reproducing 
the scene of a battle in which I had been engaged, 
my note-books and memory enabled me to correctly 
locate all the old roads, houses, earthworks, camps, 
fields, forests, and troops, as they were on the day 
of the battle. 

The sketches made by the artists on the battle- 
ground, and all the material previously obtained, 
are next taken to the panorama-studio where the 
great picture is to be painted. 

The Artists. 

Before describing the studio and its work, it 
will be interesting to look at the corps of artists em- 
ployed upon the great picture. Every man has 
some special talent. One artist excels in painting 
skies and distance, another in foreground and near- 
by trees. A third loves to paint animals, and is 
noted for his pictures of horses. To still another 
is given the study of uniforms and military equip- 
ments ; while even the artists who paint the human 
figures have peculiar ability in special lines, and 
so are assigned to different portions of the figure- 
work. And in the same way, the landscape part 
of the picture is parceled out among the landscape 
artists. 

The Composition, or First Plan. 

The preparation of the " composition " or first 
plan of the panorama is the next important feature 
of the work. 

A strip of prepared canvas forty feet long by- 
five feet high is first stretched upon a circular 
framework of wood. This framework is exactly 
one-tenth the size, in its various dimensions, of the 
building in which the panorama is to be exhibited. 
Over the canvas, sheets of heavy white drawing- 
paper are tacked. An outline of the landscape 
is roughly sketched in charcoal on this paper. 
Important masses and groups of figures are next 
located, and the work thus progresses until the inte- 
rior wall of the circular room is covered with an 
interesting sketch of what a spectator would have 
seen during the battle, if he had stood at the exact 
point of view selected by the artists as the center 
of the landscape. 

The leading figure-painter always controls this 



part of the work. He carefully plans the design 
so as to secure graceful and effective lines in the 
landscape and interesting grouping for the figures. 
This is no small task, as it is necessary carefully to 
arrange the proportions of these figures so that 
they will appear life-sized in the finished painting. 
Changes, alterations, and improvements are made 
with charcoal, and at last the sketch becomes a 
drawing. The artists who arc to paint special 
features or parts of the panorama are now made 
acquainted with the outlines of the composition, 
and, working under the direction of the chief 
painter, they aid him in making a clear pen-and- 
ink drawing over the charcoal outline. When this 
pen-and-ink outline has been completed, the char- 
coal marks are dusted off, and, later, are entirely 
removed by rubbing bread-crumbs over the paper. 

In the preparation of this first drawing, the 
artists become familiar with the general plan of 
the big painting, and can work more intelligently 
when called to execute it upon the panorama- 
canvas. 

In the composition, every command is located 
and the prominent officers are noted, while por- 
traits of soldiers known to have been in the fore- 
ground are also indicated. 

The landscape, roads, and other natural objects 
are drawn so as to present the scene of battle as 
it actually appeared at the time of the conflict. 
In doing this, the sketches and note -books are con- 
stantly referred to. When finished, the composi- 
tion is a pen-and-ink drawing on a scale one-tenth 
that of the proposed panorama. This drawing, 
embraced on a strip of paper forty feet long and 
five feet wide, is divided into ten sections, every 
section being indicated by a letter of the alphabet. 
Every one of these sections is then covered with 
an equal number of squares, every square being 
designated by the letter of the section as well as 
a number: thus. Square A I, Square A 2, and 
so on. This is to aid the artists in enlarging the 
pen-and-ink drawing, and transferring it to the 
panorama-canvas, which is likewise covered with 
an equal number of squares, each square being ten 
times the width and and height of the correspond- 
ing one on the pen-and-ink drawing. 

A tracing of the pen-and-ink drawing is next 
made, and by means of it the outlines of the draw- 
ing are transferred to the small canvas, which is of 
exactly the same size as the paper that contains 
the drawing. On this canvas, the chief artist 
rapidly paints and indicates the different degrees 
of color, light, and shade that he wishes to have 
given to the panorama. This canvas when thus 
treated, is known as "the dummy." It is very 
useful as a color guide to the artists when they are 
at work upon the panorama itself. 



HOW A OR?: AT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



IOI 



The Out-Door Studio. 

Although the greater part of the work is done 
in the panorama-studio, much of the preliminary 
sketching is often done out-of-doors. The artists 
who painted one well-known American panorama 
occupied for a time the terraced garden attached 
to the residence of the principal artist, where they 
set up a real garden-studio. The garden was a 



would be aiming his directly at the big easel of 
one of the chief figure-painters. Still another 
model, posturing for the time as a dead soldier, 
would be lying prone on the grass, where he would 
have to keep quite still, — perfectly still, — no mat- 
ter how constantly the busy flies might annoy him. 
The models who " pose " for the figures in the 
panorama are carefully selected. They must be 
men strong enough to endure the strain of stand- 



'" 




eSafe, ■■i^ff^L'- ' a* 









D 







A SECTION (GREATLY REDUCED) OF THE PEN-AND-INK DRAWING, OR FIRS' 



T PLAN, OF A PANORAMA. 



corner-lot separated from the street by a picket- 
fence, above and through which the passer-by had 
a full view of what was going on within. Scattered 
about the garden were guns and uniforms, harness, 
haversacks, and military equipments, — relics of 
the war-days, — so scorched and camp-stained that 
a tramp would have condemned them. But thev 
were highly prized by the artists, as the best clothes 
for the models who, in various attitudes, repre- 
senting either Union or Confederate soldiers, were 
disposed about the garden-studio. Some would 
be reclining on the ground as wounded men ; one 
would be leaning on an Enfield rifle, while another 



ing or lying in the same position for some time, 
and without any change or rest. They must also 
be intelligent enough to understand the action of 
such figures in the composition as they are re- 
quired to personate. The models assume posi- 
tions, and wear uniforms, arms, and accouterments, 
precisely similar to those of the figures in the 
original sketch — whether of private soldiers or 
general officers — which they for the moment 
represent. 

The collection of uniforms and equipments — 
such as that in the garden-studio — is one of the 
curiosities of a panorama-studio. Every branch 



102 



HOW A GREAT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



[December, 



of the military service is represented in the cloth- 
ing of the "blue and the gray," here brought 
together. The various styles of saddle and bridle, 
of guns, sabers, pistols, carbines, blankets, rough 
army shoes, heavy woolen socks, haversacks, can- 
teens, shelter-tents, and harness for artillery horses 
and mules, may here be seen. 

The Studio. 

The work can now be transferred to the studio 
proper. This is a large circular building, strongly 
built of wood, but completely covered with cor- 
rugated iron, which serves the double purpose of 



An iron track, built within a few feet of the 
walls and twice as broad as an ordinary railroad, 
runs around the interior of the building. The cars 
for this track vary in height from ten to fifty feet. 
They are in reality wooden towers on wheels — 
every tower composed of a number of platforms, 
reached by flights of stairs, and so arranged as to 
leave the sides of the platforms nearest to the can- 
vas unobstructed. Six of these cars are provided 
for the painting of a single panorama. 

Fifty feet above the railroad track, a massive ring 
or circle of timber is held in place by brackets fast- 
ened to the wall of the studio. This ring must be 
of exactly the same size as the corresponding ring 




SPECIMENS OF SKETCHES MADE BY THE ARTISTS IN THE OUT-DOOR STUDIO. 



protection from fire and cold. One-third of the 
circular roof is made of glass, thus admirably light- 
ing the interior of the studio. The wall of the 
building is nearly sixty feet high, and is braced 
and strengthened with heavy timbers, necessary to 
support the weight and strain of the canvas. In 
the center of the studio is a circular platform, the 
height of which is determined by the horizon, or eye 
line, of the panorama to be painted. Above the 
platform, a canvas canopy, called the " umbrella," is 
suspended. This prevents the artist or spectator from 
seeing the upper edge of the canvas, and causes the 
scene to appear as if viewed from under a piazza- 
roof which shuts out the sky directly overhead. 



from which the immense painted canvas is to hang, 
in the building in which the cyclorama is to be 
exhibited when completed. And it is measured 
and leveled by a surveyor who places his transit, 
or measuring instrument, on the central platform. 



The Canvas. 

The linen or canvas for the panorama is of 
the best quality, and heavier than that used for 
smaller paintings. It is specially woven at Brus- 
sels, Belgium, in great breadths, thirty feet wide 
by fifty feet long. These are neatly stitched to- 



1 886. J 



HOW A GREAT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



IO 



O 



gether, and compactly folded in a strong wooden water, and the face of the canvas is given a coat 
box in which the canvas is sent to this country. of weak glue, known as " size." 



-'.'-v.-r'' 'MW'y -:; K -~ -"--;"T; : -'-Vr=j- 'X' ri*$jp*- 



The Painting. 

House-painters now spread 
over the canvas a ton or 
more of " whiting " (white 
lead and oil), which 
when dry forms the 
surface upon which 
the artists paint the 
panorama. The orig- 
inal drawing has 
meanwhile been pho- 
tographed by sec- 
tions on glass plates. 
By an arrangement 
of lenses and a strong 
ight, like a magic 
antern, an enlarged 
image of every section 




THE ARTISTS AND 
THEIR MODELS 
AT WORK IN THE OUT- 
DOOR STUDIO. 



On arrival at the studio, it is hung and nailed 
fast to the ring by " riggers," who sing as they haul 
up and shake out the great folds, which drape 
down in grand masses that delight the artists' eyes. 
The canvas is a little longer than the circumference 
of the big wooden ring from which it is hung; 
but a sailor, suspended from a boatswain's chair, 
stitches the lap together so tidily that the seam is 
not visible from the platform. A wide hem is next 
stitched around the lower edge of the canvas, 
spaces being left open for the introduction of sec- 
tions of a hollow iron ring, of the same circum- 
ference as the wooden ring above. The sections 
of the ring, after all have been slipped inside the 
hem, are fastened together by couplings, and the 
lower part of the canvas is thus stretched into cir- 
cular form to match the top. Still more weight, 
however, is required to stretch the canvas perpen- 
dicularly ; and so a thousand or more bricks, weigh- 
ing in all from two to three tons, are fastened at 
intervals around the iron ring in groups — three or 
four bricks to each group. 

The canvas is now ready to be " primed " ; that 
is, to have its first coat of color laid on. In prepa- 
ration for this, the back is thoroughly sponged with 






■-A.5P 



HANGING THE CANVAS. 



is thrown upon the great canvas, which has been 
similarly lined off into sections and squares, every 
section of the original drawing being magnified 
to the exact size of the corresponding section on 
the canvas. 

For this work, night is the most favorable 
time, as the lines are then more sharply outlined, 
and, being distinctly visible, can be rapidly traced 



104 



HOW A GREAT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



[December, 



on the canvas with umber. The illustration show- 
ing this scene fully explains the work. But as the 
great canvas is so much larger than the paper on 
which the first drawing was made, the enlarged 
copy of that drawing always seems to contain 
too few figures. When all of the lines, there- 
fore, are traced upon the canvas, many more fig- 
ures have to be introduced into the scene, other- 
wise old soldiers and their friends would ask : 
" Where are your troops?" In the pen-and-ink 



The landscape outline is correspondingly worked 
up, and the artists are busy putting in broad masses 
of color to give a tone to the canvas and remove 
the glare of light reflected from its too white 
surface. 

The Ground-Work. 

The "dummy," already referred to, is now 
frequently consulted, and affords the key and 




ir'',i Ilnli'! il„ill'.' 



nm 






Bl&if! 



4 M \\«-> J 




TRACING THE OUTLINE OF THE SMALL DRAWING, AS ENLARGED UPON THE CANVAS. 



drawing, this lack of numbers is not evident ; it is 
the result of the enlargement, which also shows 
other defects, such as would naturally be expected 
when one foot on a drawing is increased to ten feet 
on a panorama-canvas. All this has to be antici- 
pated, and is provided for. Additional groups of 
figures are rapidly sketched in, and lines of battle 
are reenforced by the addition of other soldierly 
figures. The scene represented on page 107, for 
example, when first enlarged on the great canvas, 
contained far too few figures, and the number had 
to be greatly increased before it appeared as in the 
engraving. 



suggestion of the colors to be used. Presently, 
from the topmost platform of the highest car, 
certain of the artists are busily painting away at 
the sky and putting in the clouds, which will be 
perfected when the sky has its second painting. 
These artists, up aloft, take their colors from 
a table, the top of which is arranged as a palette. 
The other artists are busy upon some special work 
to which they have been assigned, and for which 
they have already painted the studies that are now 
distributed about the platforms, every one of which 
is a veritable studio. 

All this is rapid work, and is, indeed, but the 



HOW A G R E A T BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



i °S 




ONE OF THE MOVABLE PLATFORMS USED IN PAINTING A PANORAMA. 



groundwork of the panorama, into which the PAINTS. 

" details " or special features of the picture will be 

worked later on. These details require time and The question is frequently asked, " What paints 

patience, and can be painted to better advantage do the artists use? " In the better class of battle 

when the broad masses of color are dry. panoramas, only colors of the best quality are used, 



io6 



HOW A ORE AT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



[December, 



such as are used by an artist in his work upon a 
fine oil-painting. This color is, of course, pur- 
chased in very large quantities ; as an instance, 
for the panorama in which I was interested, the 



was left thus blank and bare, and was most dis- 
turbing to the German professor who was the 
chief artist. His eye was so distracted and troubled 
by it that he one day directed some of the loitering 




THE INTERIOR OF THE PAN'ORAMA-STL'DIO 



rich yellowish paint, known as cadmium, cost 
two hundred dollars, and was contained in four 
tin cans, each the size of an ordinary peach-can. 
This is an expensive color, and while artists have 
no desire to scrimp in its use, they do object to a 
reckless waste of it. An amusing incident occurred 
in this connection during the painting of the pano- 
rama to which I have referred. 

When the composition is drawn, the general 
plan for that part of the cyclorama known as the 
foreground, which is composed of natural objects, 
is also thought out. It is then settled what por- 
tions of the great canvas will be hidden by the 
foreground of natural objects, such as real earth- 
works, mounds of sod-covered earth, and log breast- 
works. Usually that part of the canvas is left 
without color, except such fanciful sketches as the 
artists may paint for studio view only. A portion 
of our picture, " The Battle of Missionary Ridge," 



models to take some color, "any color," he said, 
"and scumble over the surface to tone it down." 

The models, dressed as Union and Confederate 
soldiers and officers, worked industriously for 
twenty minutes, when it was suddenly discovered 
that they had emptied three fifty-dollar cans of cad- 
mium and were opening the fourth ! A half-dollar's 
worth of cheap house-paint would have been bet- 
ter, for no preparation had been used to make 
the cadmium dry, and it was still soft when the 
panorama was sent for exhibition to Chicago. 
What the artists said when they discovered the 
models' mistake was not plain to me, as it was spo- 
ken in German : but I know that they all talked 
at the same time and very vigorously. 

The Central Platform. 

The central platform is, of course, the stand- 
point from which visitors will view the panorama, — 



HOW A GREAT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



I07 



and therefore the artists are obliged to go to it 
frequently, as the painting nears completion, in 
order to observe the effect and progress of their 
work. 

This, too, is the place of conference, and despite 
the signs of " No Admittance," within and without, 
visitors are frequent and usually welcome. These 
visitors are often veteran soldiers who took part in 
the action represented, and who often make help- 
ful suggestions where the artists' notes are imper- 
fect. These visitors study every detail and discuss 
the panorama point by point. They are acquainted 
with the scene and delight to study out the meaning 
of every line and dash of color. 

The army stories that are told on the central 
platform, when old soldiers meet and discuss the 
old days, would, if collected, make a prodigious 
volume. The floor of the platform is chalked 
and rcchalked with diagrams, some referring to 



which are memoranda of incidents and a variety 
of data, as well as names and addresses, are pinned 
to the convenient timber with thumb-tacks. Upon 
tables will be found sections of the composition, 
spread out opposite to their location upon the 
great canvas; field-glasses keep the drawings in 
place ; and the inevitable piece of chalk is there 
also, ready for instant use. 

The artists paint steadily, every individual being 
mainly occupied in perfecting his own work, 
though never hesitating to ask or extend aid in 
some special direction. One artist, for instance, 
has an excellent figure of a mounted officer, all 
complete excepting the portrait, a photograph 
for which is pinned to the canvas. While this 
artist goes to strengthen a line of battle, another 
one will rapidly paint in an admirable portrait for 
the incomplete figure. Soon, another brush is busy 
with the horse, while still another artist calls for 




A HATTLK PANORAMA. 



the panorama itself, but more to illustrate occur- some special saddle and bridle to be brought to 

rences upon other fields. The strong pine rail the platform that he may paint the trappings, 
surrounding the platform is penciled all over with Now, look at the back of the photograph which 

kindred decorations, while scraps of paper, upon is pinned to the canvas — a faded carte dc visite 



io8 



HOW A GREAT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



[December, 



of a young officer ; upon a slip of paper we read 
the following: ''Col. K., now on General Sheri- 
dan's staff; then captain, General Thomas's staff, 
H 47 " (meaning the section H, square 47 of the 
panorama) ; " French cap, blouse, captain's straps 
— staff— dark-blue trousers, gold cord, cavalry 



pital scene ; around him is scattered a complete field 
outfit for an army surgeon — cases of instruments, 
bandages, bottles, and a model uniformed as a hos- 
pital steward, who has stood so long in one position 
that he shakes as if he had the ague, until the 
interested painter, noting his suffering condition, 




SCENE FRU 



THE I'A-NOKAMA UF 



BATTLE UF ATLANTA. 



boots, staff sword, McClellan saddle; shabrack — 
black horse ; see sketch." 

In the above copy of a scene from the cyclorama 
called " The Battle of Atlanta," several of the fig- 
ures are portraits, the one on the foremost horse be- 
ing that of General John A. Logan. Every officer 
represented is pictured in the uniform which he 
wore on the day of the fight, while even the horses 
and their accouterments are as faithfully depicted. 

These instances will give an idea of the way 
in which facts are preserved when a panorama is 
painted by artists who conscientiously strive to 
make of the work a great historical painting. 

Upon the platform of one of the high cars an artist 
may be seen carefully finishing a Confederate hos- 



releases him with an apology for this unintentional 
cruelty. But perhaps, of all the models, the rough 
contrivance known as " the wooden horse " is both 
used and abused the most. Boards are nailed on 
or knocked off it to make it fit the size of the 
saddle, bridle, or harness in use for the moment, 
and the unfortunate human model who has to mount 
the framework designated as a horse, puts both his 
skin and his garments in danger of damage from 
nails and splinters. 

Completing the Picture. 

In most panoramas, the sky covers two-thirds 
and the landscape one-third of the canvas. In 



HOW A GREAT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



IO9 



the painting of Missionary Ridge, to which I have 
before referred, and which represents a battle upon 
hill-tops, this proportion was necessarily reversed, 
and so a longer time than usual was required to 
paint the scene. 

But now the artists are busy with the last touches. 
A car is seldom in one place for more than an hour. 
The models are chiefly employed in responding to 
the calls of the artists from their platforms : " Push 
this car ! " " Push this car ! " The small cars can 
be moved without difficulty, but the tall cars are 
very heavy, and are provided with a mechanical 
contrivance for their propulsion. 

The '-Spool" 

And now the studio begins to resound with the 
hammering of carpenters, building a huge " spool" 
upon which to roll the canvas, and the box to con- 
tain and transport it. A small cottage could be 
built for the cost of these two appliances ; for they 
must be strong and true. The barrel of the big spool 
is two feet in diameter, and is made of strips of pine 
three inches thick, grooved together. Sections 
of oak plank bolted together and fashioned into 
wheels, six inches thick and four feet in diameter, 
form the ends ; and through these, three-inch holes 
are bored to pass the cable used in handling the 
spool when the canvas is rolled upon it. The 
cable or heavy rope must be strong enough to 
bear the whole weight of the rolled panorama, 
and thus avoid a pressure upon the canvas that 
would surely injure the painting. 

Packing the Panorama. 

All the painting paraphernalia are now removed 
from the highest car, which is now to be used in 
rolling the canvas on the spool. At the top and 
bottom of the car are fastened projecting braces, or 
" bearings," in which the ends of the spool are se- 
cured in such a way that it will revolve readily, and 
will stand upright and close to the ring. A sailor 
perched on his boatswain's chair rips out the seam 
and helps the men on the platforms to nail one side 
of the canvas firmly to the spool. Other men 
loosen the canvas from the ring and remove the 
weights and iron ring at the bottom, and while the 
car is moved slowly along, the spool is revolved by 
men stationed above and below. An occasional 
nail is driven to fasten the canvas to the top of the 
spool. In two hours, if all goes well, the pano- 
rama is safely rolled face in upon the spool. By 
means of ropes and a windlass, the great roll is 
then lifted clear of the strong pins that held it in 
place, and is blocked up to permit the passage of 
the cable through the spool. The ends of the cable 
are securely fastened, and the roll, a dead weight 



of six or seven tons, is steadily lowered into the 
box in which it is to be despatched to the place 
of exhibition. This great box and its precious load 
are removed from the studio through a large door- 
way made expressly for the purpose, and arc shipped, 
on platform cars, to the building where the pan- 
orama is to be shown to the public. 




POLLING THE PAINTED PANORAMA UPON THE BIG SPOOL. 

The Exhibition Building. 

The Exhibition Building, now so familiar to all 
who live in our larger cities, is a great circular 
edifice of brick, wood, and iron. It is provided 
with an iron track and a high car built in sections 
so as to be quickly put together when required 
for use. Upon its arrival at the Exhibition Building, 
the panorama is carefully unrolled and is hung by 
the method employed for hanging the canvas in 
the studio, which has already been described. 

The Foreground. 

The material for the foreground has been pre- 
pared before the receipt of the picture. The chief 



I IO 



H W A GREAT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



[DECEMBER, 













i - '- X 



\ 



PANORAMA EXHIBITION BUILDINGS, WABASH AVENUE, CHICAGO. 



artist and the mechanical constructor have super- 
intended the construction of the platforms, follow- 
ing the irregular line indicated both on the first 
drawing and the panorama. All the lumber that 
is used is treated with a composition of silicate to 




It-! 8 . / 
llllilSiS! 









MAKING READY TO HANG THE PANORAMA IN THE 
EXHIBITION BUILDING. 



keep out moisture, and to make it fire-proof. Hun- 
dreds of loads of earth have been carted into the 
building ; quantities of lumber, trees both living 
and dead, together with a collection of fence rails, 
bushes, sods, logs, sand, and a variety of camp 
equipage, are piled about, ready for use. The plat- 
forms are the groundwork for the earth and sod, 
which are very skillfully joined to their painted 
semblances on the canvas ; bushes and trees arc 
planted ; earthworks and log camps are built ; — 
everything is done with careful intent to make the 
foreground and painting appear as one whole 
landscape, and so to join the two in meaning and 
color as to make it nearly impossible for a spec- 
tator to determine at any point which is the real 
and which the painted scene. This work calls 
for very careful judgment, as it is necessary to 
settle the exact relation in size which real objects 
shall bear to those in the painting. An ordinary 
cap or hat placed upon the foreground near the 
canvas would seem prodigious, though the same 
hat, thrown on the ground near the platform oc- 
cupied by the spectator, would not attract notice. 
The entire foreground must, therefore, be arranged 
to aid the perspective of the painting, so that when 
the panorama is ready for exhibition, even the art- 
ist, who has constantly labored to attain that very 
result, finds difficulty in realizing that the scene 
spread before him is painted upon canvas which 
hangs vertically but forty feet distant from his eye. 

Visitors. 

The curiosity of visitors has no end. They 
refuse to believe facts, and frequently resort to 
novel methods to confirm their own ideas. Many 
suspect that an immense plate of glass is placed 
between the spectator and the canvas ; and some 
persons have even thrown objects with sufficient 
force to go thrice the distance from the platform 



i886.] 



HOW A GREAT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



I I I 



to the canvas, for the purpose, as they said, of 
testing this glass. Of course, there is no glass 
nor any other means of deception than the simple 
arrangements here described. The largest figures 
on the canvas are between three and four feet 
high, though they seem to be full life size. 

A certain inquisitive old lady, visiting one of 
the earliest of these panoramas, — "The Battle 



man soldiers which looked like dwarfs beside her. 
Great laughter greeted her return to the platform, 
where she remarked : " Oh, my ! how they do grow 
when you get back, away from them ! " And this 
is the whole secret of the effect produced upon the 
spectator. 

Some very interesting " optical facts " are found 
in these panoramas. In the "Battle of Mission- 




-'. ;: ■ r* ( ^p%S'^ 






®w 



BUILDING THE FOREGROUND, UPON PLATFORMS, IN THE 
EXHIBITION BUILDING. 



of Sedan," — helped herself over the platform-rail 
by means of convenient chairs, and trotted down 
an earth road leading from the platform to the 
canvas, where — alongside the painted figures — 
she looked like Gulliver's wife among the Lili- 
putians. 

"Why! Oh, my!" she exclaimed, "look at 
these dear little men ! They are only so big ! " hold- 
ing up her parasol near a painted group of Ger- 



ary Ridge " there is, near the Craven House, on 
the side of Lookout Mountain, what appears to 
the eye to be a steep, open field. Looked at with 
a suitable field-glass, however, this precipitous ap- 
pearance disappears, as it does also in the real 
scene when looked at in the same way. This 
truth to nature results from the painstaking work 
of the artists, who have painted the distance as 
conscientiously- as the foreground. 



I 12 



HOW A GREAT BATTLE PANORAMA IS MADE. 



[December, 



Battle panoramas have been known for years in 
Europe. During the reign of Napoleon I., one was 
exhibited in Paris, and at present nearly all the 
principal cities of Europe have buildings for the 
exhibition of this kind of panorama. As all these 
buildings and panoramas are of exactly the same 



for the purpose of showing the facts that came un- 
der his observation as a soldier in the actual battle. 
A tell-tale silence pervades the platform of such 
a panorama, in direct contrast with the enthusiasm 
aroused by a panorama in which now one and now 
another veteran can recognize the places where he 




M IIIL PANORAMA 



size, an interchange of canvases is possible, and this 
is said to be the intention of the panorama compa- 
nies of the. United States. It must, however, be 
said that some of the panoramas on exhibition 
have absolutely no value as historical paintings. 
They are fictitious productions, and have in them 
nothing that a veteran can recognize and explain to 
those whom he has accompanied to the exhibition 



camped, picketed, marched, and fought. If the 
soldiers who are so earnest to have only the truth 
of history correctly printed in books, would but in- 
sist upon equal truth in the paintings of the same 
stirring conflicts, we should have many grand his- 
torical pictures instead of what may be interesting, 
but arc often badly painted and almost wholly 
imaginary scenes. 



THE BAMBERRY BOYS. 



ll 3 



CRICKET SONGS. 
By E. Whitney. 



What 's the song the crickets sing 
Summer, autumn, winter, spring? 



When I take my little broom 
And go dusting through the room : 
" Sweep ! sweep ! sweep ! sweep ! " 

When I go to bed at night, 
Then I hear them out of sight : 
" Sleep ! sleep ! sleep ! sleep ! " 



-ry day, 

sunny, then they say : 



When I waken, eve 
If it 's sunny, then 
" Peep ! peep ! peep ! peep ! ' 

But they feel as bad as I 
When it rains, for then they cry 
" Weep ! weep ! weep ! weep ! " 



THE BAMBERRY BOYS 

AND THEIR FLOCK OF SHEEP. 



By J. T. Trowbridge. 



THERE were five of the Bamberry boys, and 
when the oldest of them (Burton) was seventeen, 
and the youngest (Johnny) was seven, their Uncle 
Todd, a successful wool-grower in an adjoining 
county, made every one of them a present of a 
sheep. 

Mr. Bamberry, the boys' father, had tried the 
experiment of sheep-raising a few years before, 
but had abandoned it, after having nearly all his 
flock killed by dogs. 

"You never can find out whose dogs do the 
mischief," he said; "and it 's too much trouble 
to keep constant watch and ward against them. 
No !" he would add, emphatically, when his boys 
teased him to begin again with a few lambs, " I never 
want to see another sheep come upon my farm ! " 

But he was a good-natured man, and when 
Uncle Todd made his offer of five yearling lambs, 
provided the boys would go over after shearing- 
time and make him a visit and drive them home, 
Mr. Bamberry, reluctantly assenting, said : 

" Well, well ! try it, if you will ; but remember, 
it 's your experiment, not mine." 

Then the question arose, who should go for the 
sheep? and as not one of the boys was willing to 
remain at home, — not even seven-year-old Johnny, 
nor Henry, the third one, who was lame, — it was 
decided that they all should go. They could take 
Dolly and the one-horse wagon, drive over on one 
day, and return with the sheep the next. 

It was a delightful adventure, and never were five 
boys happier than the Bamberry brothers when. 
Vol. XIV.— 8. 



on the second morning, while the air was yet cool 
and the dew on the grass, they set out with their 
bleating flock for home. They proceeded leisurely, 
letting the young sheep nibble occasionally by the 
wayside ; and when one appeared tired and lagged 
too much, they picked it up and tumbled it into 
the wagon. At eleven o'clock they stopped to feed 
the horse and eat their own luncheon at a roadside 
spring, and by the middle of the afternoon they 
arrived home triumphantly with their little flock. 

Nothing interests boys on a farm so much as 
something of their own to take care of and hope 
for profit from ; and Uncle Todd's gift proved in 
many ways a benefit, not only to the brothers, but 
to the whole Bamberry household. It served to 
cure Burton of his restlessness ; and from that time 
Todd, the second son (named after his uncle), 
began to show an interest in farm matters, which 
had never had the least attraction for him before. 
And the flock was a bond of union between the 
five boys, making them not only better brothers, 
but better sons. 

Mr. Bamberry was to have the wool in return for 
pasturage and fodder ; but the sheep and their 
increase were to belong to the boys. The flock 
prospered, numbering eleven the second year (in- 
cluding two pairs of twins), and eighteen the third, 
not counting two or three lambs which the boys 
had fattened for the table and sold to their father 
for a good price. 

As a protection against dogs, the boys had built 
a high pen of unplaned boards, on the edge of 



ii4 



THE BAMBERRY BOYS 



the pasture where the flock ranged in summer, calling " Ca-day ! Ca-day ! Nan! Nan! Come, 

Into this fold the sheep were enticed every evening Nan ! " as loud as he could. 

by a little salt or a few handfuls of beans, which they Getting no response, he hurried on. looking 

learned to expect, and came for so regularly, that behind .stone-heaps and old stumps, and in the 



it was very little trouble to shut them up for the 
night. If not already at the wicket, when one of 
the young shepherds appeared at dusk, his cheery 
call, ''Ca-day! Ca-day! " or "Nan ! Nan ! Nan ! " 
would bring the sheep scampering over the hills 
and crowding into the inclosure. Then 
they were left to lick the salt or nibble at 
the beans in the troughs, and the wicket 
was shut for the night. 

All went well until, one Sep- 
tember eveningof that third year, -■ 



corners of fences, until suddenly he saw flit away 
before him something which he mistook for a 
sheep. But no ! it was a dog. It disappeared 
almost immediately in the darkness, and Johnny 
stood trembling with fear. 



Jr w- 



THE YOUNG SHEPHERD S CHEERY CALL WOULD BRING 
THE SHEEP SCAMPERING OVER THE HILLS." 




Johnny, then aged 
ten, went to put up 
the sheep. Hefound 
them already run- 
ning to the pen, and 
he noticed that they 
appeared frightened. 
Having pacified 
them with the con- 
tentsof his little pail. 
he passed by the 
troughs, to see if they were all there. A count, 
carefully repeated, showed him that a sheep and a 
lamb were missing. 

Then he went out and called, but heard no an- 
swering bleat, and saw no sheep or lamb coming 
over the shadowy slopes in the twilight. Fearing 
some danger to them, he ran to the summit of the 
hill, and looked off into the dim hollows beyond. 




He immediately ran home and told his brothers, 
who went with pitchforks, a lantern, and a gun, 
to find the missing members of the flock. They 
were soon found, not far from the spot where 
Johnny had seen the dog; and two more dogs, 
or the same dog and another, darted away at the 
approach of the lantern, and disappeared before 
Todd could bring the gun to his shoulder. 

The sheep and lamb were both dead, the mother 
haying perhaps sacrificed her life in trying to 
protect her young, instead of cantering away with 
the rest of the frightened flock. Even if there had 
been no other evidence, the mangled throats of 
the victims betrayed that the slaughter was the 
work of dogs. 

The boys were greatly excited ; and as they 
dragged the slain creatures homeward, across the 
dreary pasture, Johnny exclaimed bitterly : 

" That was my little pet, the prettiest lamb of 
the whole flock ! " 

" I thought dogs killed sheep only at night," 
said Will, the fourth son, who carried the lantern. 

" So did I," said Burt. " And it 's a pretty 
pass we '\e come to, if penning our sheep at night 
wont answer, and they can be dogged and killed 
before it is fairly dark, and almost under our eyes ! 
I believe one of those curs was Judge Mason's." 

" I thought one was Haniman's miserable 
mongrel," said Todd. 

Mr. Bamberry was hardly less exasperated than 
the boys when they reached home with the bad 
news. But he said : 



AND THEIR FLOCK OF SHEEP. 



115 



" It 's about what I expected. There 's no way 
to keep sheep safe from dogs in this neighborhood, 
unless you watch 'em or pen 'em day and night. 
And now the trouble 's begun, I 'm afraid you '11 
have enough of it." 

"We '11 see about some of those dogs!" said 
Burton angrily. 

" That will be of no use," said his father. "You 
can't trace 'em : and there '11 be worse trouble if 
you touch any man's dog without positive proof of 
his guilt." 

Burt whispered to Todd, and taking the lantern, 
they went over to call on the Haniman boys, to 
tell them of their loss. The Hanimans listened 
with interest and sympathy, but when Todd said, 
" I think your dog was one of them," they cried out 
indignantly against so absurd a suspicion. 

"Our Prince?" said Joe Haniman. "Why. 
he 's the gentlest, kindest, truest dog in the world ! 
Here, Prince ! " And he began to whistle. 

" He goes with our sheep, and protects 'em," 
said Joe's brother Bob. " You could n't get him 
to hurt one ; if you should set him on a sheep, he 
would only just catch and hold it." 

"You could n't have seen him," Joe stopped 
whistling to say. " He 's always at home ; I saw 
him not half an hour ago. Here, Prince ! — here 
he is, now," as the gentlest, kindest, truest dog in 
the world came bounding to his side. " There ! 
does he look like a dog that would kill sheep ? " 

He certainly did not ; and Todd was easily con- 
vinced that he had been mistaken. Prince was a 
long-legged, tawny mongrel, and there were per- 
haps fifty dogs in the county that might be taken 
for him in the dusk. 

The Bamberry boys next went to call on Judge 
Mason, Burt saying that he himself had not been 
half so sure of the Haniman dog as he was of 
the judge's. 

They found the judge kind and candid, but in- 
clined to scoff at the notion that his Roland could 
be guilty of so grave an offense. 

"Where is he now?" Burt inquired. 

" I don't know," said the judge. " He 's about 
the place, somewhere ; I saw him not ten minutes 
since. He may have slipped off, to avoid being 
shut up for the night in the woodshed ; he does 
sometimes. But he 's the most harmless dog — 
you know him." 

" I know him only too well," replied Burt. 
"And I 'm confident I saw him to-night." 

" Pooh ! pooh ! don't be too hasty," said the 
judge, putting his hand on Burt's shoulder. "Could 
you swear that as a fact you really saw him ? " 

" No," Burt admitted ; "but " 

"You are not certain; and even if you did 
see him, that fact never would convince me that 



Roland had killed your sheep. Why, boys, I 've 
such confidence in that noble dog that I 'm not 
afraid to offer fifty dollars for every sheep killed 
in this county, if he can be proved to have been 
in any way concerned in killing or mangling one." 

" It maybe hard to prove. But I should like to 
see your dog now," said Todd. 

" Well, you can see him ; he can't be far away." 
And the judge called, but called in vain ; no 
Roland appeared. " He 's afraid of the woodshed," 
said his master with an indulgent laugh. " Can't 
blame him. That dog 's very cunning!" 

The boys went to the houses of two or three 
other neighbors who kept dogs, but got no satis- 
faction anywhere. 

'■ I knew just how it would turn out," said their 
father, on their return home. " No man will 
admit that his dog kills sheep, though you should 
canvass the country. The only way is for one of 
you to keep in sight of the flock during the day, 
and then pen them early." 

The boys resolved to act by this advice, and 
make the best of their misfortune. But worse was 
yet to come. 

On the second morning after this, on going to 
let out the flock, Henry was astonished by what 
he saw. Five sheep had been killed in the night, 
and lay dead in the pen with their throats man- 
gled. The others started and huddled into cor- 
ners at the slightest sound or motion, showing that 
they had been subjected to a recent great fright 
and disturbance. 

Henry did not open the wicket, but limped 
homeward as fast as he could ; and it was not long 
before his brothers were with him on the spot. 
For a while, not much was to be heard but mut- 
tered vengeance. Todd and Will were for going 
off at once and seeking for evidence of sheep- 
killing among all the dogs in town — traces of their 
recent feast must be discovered on some of them ; 
but Burt said : 

" I Ve tried that once ; and, as father says, it 's 
of no use. The best way is to keep still, and think 
of some plan to get even with them." 

"We must do something soon," said Todd, " or 
we shall lose all our sheep, now that the brutes 
have had a taste of them. I thought this pen was 
high enough, and close enough, to protect them 
against all dogs, big or little." 

" It must be a very small dog that could crawl 
between these boards," said Henry ; " and a very 
long-legged one that could jump over. I would n't 
have believed any dog in the world could clear 
such a fence ! " 

" The dogs that killed those sheep certainly got 
over, and I 'm sure there was more than one," 
said Burt. " None that could crawl through would 



n6 



THE HAM BERRY BOYS 



[December, 



be apt to have strength or courage to attack a 
flock. Boys, look here ! " 

" Scratches, as sure as fate ! " said Henry. " See 
here ! — and here ! " 

Marks on the boards were found, indicating that 
attempts to get over had been made by dogs that 
had left the prints of their claws on the fence, 
either in leaping up or in falling back. Places, 
too, were discovered, where the lower ones had 
been clawed and gnawed, as if in efforts to get 
through. 

"I'll tell you, boys!" cried Todd, "there's 
been a whole pack of dogs here ! Some have got 
over, and the rest could n't. Some have tried to 
work through." 

"Sheep-killing dogs go in packs, like wolves/' 
said Burt. " When one discovers a flock open to 
attack, it seems as if he went and told the others. 
Constant watching, after that, is the only thing 
that can save a single one of that flock. It is just 
as father has told us all along ; and all the com- 
fort we shall get out of him will be, ' It 's what I 
expected; now, maybe you '11 believe what I say.' 
What are we going to do ? " 

" I believe," said Henry, " we can trap the dogs, 
just as I have heard of farmers trapping wolves in 
old times." 

" I 've thought of that," said Todd. " It will 
be better than trying to kill them off by poisoning 
some of the meat and leaving it for them to eat." 

"Say nothing to anybody, boys," said Burt; 
"but let us set quietly to work, and rebuild this 
pen in such a way that any dog that wants to get 
in can do so without much trouble. We '11 have 
it harder for him to get out, 1 tell you ! " 

They found some comfort in talking over the 
plan and anticipating the results. The living 
sheep were let out, and the dead ones left in the 
pen, which before night was made considerably 
higher. And on the side toward the pasture, at 
which the dogs had evidently got over, one sec- 
tion of the fence was made to slant inward toward 
the top, so that dogs could easily run up and leap 
over, while it would be impossible for the "long- 
est-shanked cur in creation," as Todd said, "to 
jump back again." 

That evening, after having been watched by one 
of the boys all day, the living sheep and lambs 
were driven to the shed and shut in ; but the dead 
sheep were left in the pen, and the wicket was 
made fast. Then the boys withdrew, to await 
anxiously what might happen over night. 

They feared that, dogs being probably more 
knowing than wolves, it might not be easy to catch 
them in such a trap ; and then, when it was too 
late to go back to the pen, they began to think 
over and discuss all the possibilities of the marau- 



ders getting out again, even if caught. But there 
was nothing to be done before morning except to 
sleep, if they could. 

They had youth and health, and they slept, 
notwithstanding their excitement. But at the 
first streak of day, Burt and Todd were up; and 
their whispers, as they hurriedly dressed, in the 
great farm-house garret, awoke their brothers. 
Ten-year-old Johnny was the last to get his sleepy 
eyes unsealed and tumble out of bed; and with 
some of his clothes on and the rest in his hands, 
he followed the others down the dim stairs, and 
out into the cool, gray September morning. 

The boys looked first to see that the sheep in the 
shed had not been molested ; then they hastened 
on to the fold which they had converted into a 
trap. Lame Henry, whom even little Johnny 
outstripped in that eager race, hobbled behind ; 
while Todd, the best runner, was the first to reach 
the pen. He looked through the fence. There 
was a pause, and silence of a few seconds, broken 
only by the sounds of feet hurrying behind him. 
Then he turned and flung up his hands, excitedly, 
shouting back at his brothers : 

"We 've got 'em! we 've got 'em! Come, 
quick ! " He beckoned frantically, and, turning 
again to look into the pen, almost went into con- 
vulsions of gleeful triumph as Burt and Will and 
Johnny came clattering to the spot. 

Then Henry, still in the rear, but watching 
sharply what was taking place at the pen, saw the 
others go into similar convulsions, as one by one 
they peeped between the rails ; and finally he 
himself followed the prevailing custom, as he came 
up and took a look. 

And well might the young owners of those 
slain sheep exult ! Never before, I am sure, did a 
sheep-fold in a region rid of wild beasts present 
so amazing a spectacle. 

Dogs ! At first sight, it seemed almost full of 
them. There were twenty-three by actual count 
(and this is no fiction) ; dogs of nearly all colors, 
shapes, and sizes, known the country round : surly 
bull-dogs, restless fox-hounds, and meeching mon- 
grels, with cringing tails. 

There were several neighbors' dogs that the boys 
knew ; among them, " the kindest, gentlest, truest 
dog that ever was," — Haniman's Prince, — and 
Judge Mason's "noble" Roland ! There were also 
dogs that none of the Bamberries remembered ever 
to have seen before. There were even three or 
four half-breed shepherd dogs, that had left unhurt 
their own masters' flocks to prey upon the flocks 
of their neighbors. 

"Roland was a little too cunning for his own 
good ! " chuckled Will. " The woodshed he hates 
so would have been better for his health last night." 



AND THEIR FLOCK OF SHEEP. 



117 



The dead sheep had been partly devoured, 
observing which, Todd remarked : 

" I thought dogs were more knowing than 
wolves ; but they say wolves, caught in such a 
trap, never will touch a sheep until they find a safe 
way out again." 

There was an animated discussion as to what 
should be done with so many dangerous members 
of the community. Todd thought they ought to 



" They know they are caught, and will probably 
get punished ; that 's all their conscience amounts 
to," said Will, who strongly advocated the shoot- 
ing policy. 

" It looks like a dog-show ! " exclaimed Johnny, 
walking around to get a good view of all the slink- 
ing and cowering curs. 

From that Burt took a hint. 

" A dog-show it is, and a dog-show it shall be ! 




"WELL MIGHT THE YOUNG OWNERS OF THOSE SLAIN SHEEP EXULT ! " 



shoot them all, and then call upon the owners to 
pay damages. 

" We '11 have the damages," said Burt, " and 
I 've no doubt most of the dogs deserve to be 
killed ; but I prefer to let the owners do the killing. 
Some are valuable dogs ; and it 's more their mas- 
ters' fault than their own that they have been 
allowed to run loose, and get into temptation, 
along with bad company. They have been simply 
acting out their original dog-nature." 

•'Yes ; but the way they act," said Todd, "shows 
they have some conscience about such things, and 
know that they have been doing wrong." 



We '11 have some fun out of this thing, boys, and 
maybe some money to pay us for all our trouble 
and loss." 

The idea became immediately popular. 

"Admission, ten cents; children under twelve 
years old, half price," laughed Henry. 

•'Owners of dogs contributed, to be put on the 
free list," said Todd. 

" ' Contributed ' is good ! " cried Burt, with grim 
humor. 

"So is 'free list,'" added Will. "Perhaps 
we 'd better offer prizes ! " 

" That might be going a little too far; we must 



uS 



THE BAMBERRY BOYS 



[December, 







TAKING THE CULPRITS HOME. 



draw the line somewhere," observed Todd, dryly. 
" Any owner who will come forward like a man, 
pay damages, and take his animal away, may see 
the show for nothing. How 's that, boys ? " 

" All right," replied Burt. " But now, about 
the damages ? " 

" I say, make every man that has a dog in this 
show pay a round ten dollars," said Will ; "or else 
kill his dog." 

"And prosecute him, under the law," added 
Todd. " Boys, we have control of the whole affair 
now." 

" That 's true," assented Burt. " And for that 
very reason we should be careful." 

" Temper justice with mercy," observed Henry. 

The matter was talked over with their father, 
who said, as he came and looked into the pen, 



"Well done! well done, boys! a good catch, a 
wonderful catch, I declare ! " But he objected to a 
part of their plan. 

" It 's fair and right," he said, " to make every 
man whose dog is found here pay a round sum 
for him, say, five dollars. But I 'm afraid it will 
look a little too much like a money-making job on 
our part if you charge anything for admission to 
the show." 

The boys thought he was right ; and though 
they were reluctant to give up that advantage, 
they concluded to have the fun without the profit, 
and make the show free to the public. 

After breakfast, while Henry and Johnny re- 
mained to watch the captives, with a loaded gun 
and plenty of ammunition, Burt and Todd and 
Will set off on horseback, riding in different direc- 



AND THEIR FLOCK OF SHEEP 



119 



tions, to notify all owners of dogs within a radius 
of six or eight miles to come and claim their 
property, and, incidentally, they invited everybody 
to the show. 

One of the first persons Todd called upon was 
Judge Mason, whom he found in his peach-orchard. 

'• Good-morning, Judge Mason," he said, cheer- 
fully, from his horse. " Is your dog about the place 
this morning?" 

'•'Well! — hm!" coughed the judge, "I sup- 
pose so. I think I saw him." He was not a man 
who would tell an untruth ; and he must have 
imagined that he had seen Roland very recently. 

"Was he shut in the woodshed last night?" 
Todd asked. 

'•I \e no doubt of it ; I gave orders that he 
should be," said the judge. "Any more trouble 
with your sheep ? " 

Instead of answering this question, Todd asked 
another : 

; ' Do you remember your offer of fifty dollars for 
every sheep killed in the county, if your dog was 
proved to have been concerned in killing or man- 
gling one ? " 

" I believe I did say that, I know Roland so 
well ! " exclaimed the judge. " Why? " 

" Because," said Todd, with a gleaming smile, 
"according to that, you owe us three hundred 
and fifty dollars." 

" What ! what ! what ! " said the judge. 

" It is no mere suspicion this time," said Todd. 
" If you have seen your noble and harmless dog 
this morning, you 've seen him in the trap we set 
for him, where I just left him, shut up with the 
carcasses of five more sheep, killed night before 
last. That makes seven in all — three hundred 
and fifty dollars!" he repeated, with a very grim 
sort of laugh. 

"Todd Bamberry ! " said the judge, explosively, 
" it 's impossible ! " 

" Seeing is believing," rejoined Todd. " Wont 
you come over, please, and see for yourself? " 



" Then you boys caught him and put him there ! " 
declared the judge, looking very red and angry. 

"There are twenty-two other dogs with him," 
said Todd. " Could we have caught them all and 
shut them up together ? We must have had a 
lively night's work if we did ! " 

"Well! well!" said the judge, "I 'm as- 
tounded. I '11 go over and see about it." 

"Do, if you please. Father is waiting to talk 
with the owners who come to take their dogs away. 
We '11 let the noble Roland off for a trifle less than 
three hundred and fifty ! " And Todd galloped away. 

Burt, meantime, had seen the Haniman boys, 
and notified them of Prince's capture. So the 
three went the rounds of the neighborhood, and 
far beyond, spreading the news, which created an 
extraordinary sensation, rememembered to this 
day in all that part of the country. 

The show was well patronized that afternoon, 
men and boys flocking from all parts to see the 
catch of twenty-three sheep-killers, secured by the 
Bamberry boys in one night. Visitors were com- 
ing and going all the afternoon ; and fifteen of them 
led away dejected-looking curs, with tails between 
their legs and ropes around their necks. 

At night, eight of the dogs remained unclaimed ; 
and for five of them no owners ever appeared. They 
were accordingly shot. How many of the others 
shared the same fate, at the hands of masters who 
despaired of their reform, the boys never knew. 

For most of the eighteen that were redeemed 
they received five dollars each ; but for a few they 
got only a part, in cash, of the penalty demanded, 
and were never able to collect the whole. The 
total sum which they realized was a little over 
sixty-seven dollars ; and that they considered suffi- 
cient to cover past damages and some future risks. 

They kept their sheep-pen built in the same 
way, but never again caught any clogs, nor lost any 
more sheep from canine depredations. Their flock 
prospered, and their father was obliged at length 
to acknowledge that the experiment was a success. 



I] , I 




120 



THE STORY OF A SQUASH. 



[December, 






nd it 
That. 

4nd 



here once was a. caveat biO Sauash vine „ 
J,f "went Spreading" o 'er the around ; 
|;t covered oil the little plant's 
„i% rid things , that" or-evv around' 

"■>'.. Just liKe this 
bore Suck en-eat bio squashes \'X, 
the. children came one day 



cave m one of them,, 




there they used to play 
lusf h'Ke this ! 




® O that Squash just Kepc on 6fowm|\\ __ 
fM'fU ^^) Till at last the children cried ; — ■ ^- 
((f#^j) fe>cts bring; our beds out here to-mqht , 
^^^^ <^nd \ve can, sleep inside 






THE STORY OF A SQUASH. 



121 




| ulT c^uite early in. the mcvrrvi'rio , 

%^rnlc the ckildi-ens sleep was sound, 
Trie farmer, he came out to see 
His squashes hic^ and rpunc! 
Just like this ! 




^ 



ve been thLrLlsing ,/said the Parmer 
Twould he quite ia. cjenei'ous thine? 
%) Jf 8 I should Servdf this cji*ee\t big Squash 
J^Ls a present tcji the M,inc! !'*' 





they- brouoht theNlarole jarn\ wagon , 
g)Ut they had to tug and Haul 
T° <?et 'hac tuQ, Squash sapely m , 
J%,nd not to let it ft" 1 





W%k 






122 



THE STORY OF A SQUASH. 



[December, 




f hen they tooK it Co the palace ; 
sJIknct the rarmer went alone . — 
he good man felt So pleased and proud 
He'sanq a merry sono ! 




||S)u.t in spite of 3 all the joltino , 
nd the sinairwl, and the rest 
^hose children slept a3 quietly 
S birdies in a ~rvest ! 







(9mm w 



hen they drove up to the palace , 
There- Vv'as wonder' and surprise ; - 

e gCir\Q threw down his cjol den crown , 
%nd stared , and rubbed his eyes .' 
^u-s t like this Jf^^ 



w 

*HI* Ken thev bore it to the- Kitchen , 
But the cook exclaimed with tears 



m aa 



%f I should make it into pies 
Ifwculd tahe me twenty years . 




THE STORY OF A SQUASH. 



123 






•^f 









-,-*• 



> 




ow the JTl,ino was in the "parlor, 
^Vs/aitino pleasantly ^>« pie . 

ut when they brouoht " that messaoc taeK 



sjire -Plashed Prom out his e 



iy® 




p ne Tose , and gouoht the Kitchen 



|%nd he SpaKe in thunder-tone - , 

©uicK: maKe those pies , thou miscreant , 



a d 




uncjeon c/roarv I MkM 




r ^^ 



en the ■rricihtened cooK van trcmblinc, 

b put on his lar-ciest pot 
jpile xxp the wood he cried aloud ; 

%n.d make the oven not ! 



124 



THE STORY OF A SQUASH. 



[December, 




ut it happened Just that moment , 
"That those sleepy Si^S and boys 
,waKed at last , and out they came 
Astonished at the noise . 



ft|§Jh! the cooh ^lung ofP his apron ,r 
j^nd he toi-o his Cap in two,— ''--$ Vv 
le Scullions ran to tell the Mind"! — 
hat a hullabaloo ! 






u.t the children- oh, the children.' 
hey were not at all afraid ; — 
^S )h T^ e Y ate $F e ^ bowls of bread andtrtilK 
& ,nd lots oP marmalade ! 



.£ 



flf** ! ^ arne the Hind and Queen to view them , 
" tjjj PAH the court waS there beside . 

"©h , children, dear, how came Y OLL ^ere ' 
The Queen deliohted cried ! 
Just like this ! 





THE STORY OF A SQUASH. 



121 



Then the childrerv told theit- Story , 
a^rid. they becjged on bended Knee ; — 
^ood Kino and Queen ,'please .send us "home , 
And we will grateful be ! ** 

-»^jf o trie carpenter? was iummoned , 
#^>nd Ke brought his took along - 
e. sawed four 'wheels of 5 pear -tree xvood , 
^%,nd made them stout and StronO ; 

D" *££*—" ~^p^ 
in the oreat biq Sduash. they nailed them- J~ /■_< 
— Ouoth the carpenter:- 1(3 done U, .. i .---i--si;t- ■ 

^uoth the Hi no ! Irind out myhorSes! xi?^ 
And the children, cried -What fun ! 



o they harnessed the Kind's horses 
they piled the children, in. 
home they "went , in. oreat content , 
.mid a_ merry drn. ! 

Just L'he \K\% ! 







I 26 



A SCHEMING OLD SANTA CLAUS. 



[December, 



A SCHEMING OLD SANTA CLAUS. 



By John R. Coryell. 



Ned Joyce was always a jolly fellow. He was 
jolly on the hottest clay in summer and on the 
wettest day in spring ; but in winter he was jollier 
than ever. Particularly jolly was he one tingling 
cold twentieth of December evening. In fact, you 
may safely say that he was then the jolliest man to 
be found either in New York or Brooklyn. 

Why, his rosy cheeks glowed, and his blue eyes 
twinkled with positively hilarious happiness, and 
he looked so much like an overgrown Christmas 
cherub, that passers-by glanced back at him with a 
comfortable sort of smile, and then went on again 
with a new stock of pleasant thoughts as if, after 
encountering him, a body could think no other 
kind of thoughts. 

It was just so every winter, as Christmas came 
around. The nearer Christmas came the jollier 
Ned grew, until at last he was so full of good-will 
to everybody that his chuckles and smiles be- 
came infectious, and the stoniest-hearted stran- 
gers would find themselves smiling back at him. 

No one knows for how many gifts he was respon- 
sible, for, as everybody knows, it is impossible for 
the meanest man in the world to resist the Christ- 
mas spirit if once it get into his heart. And it 
will get into his heart the moment a sympathetic 
smile warms it. You see, the Christmas spirit is 
always on the watch for such chances, and I be- 
lieve that it followed jolly Ned Joyce wherever he 
went, knowing how people's hearts warmed at the 
very sight of him. And so it happened that often, 
during Christmas week, careless, worldly-minded 
men, who had never thought of giving a present, 
would meet him, smile kindly at him, and then 
rush away and buy presents for sons and daugh- 
ters or nieces and nephews. 

But of all this Ned Joyce had never a suspi- 
cion, for he was the modestest kind of a man. He 
scattered his smiles right and left, on boot-black 
or bank president impartially, and went his way 
unconscious of the good he was doing. 

And this is just what he did that particular twen- 
tieth day of December, as he stepped along as 
briskly as ever his fat little legs could carry him. 
He was in a hurry, partly because he was going 
home, partly because it was so very cold, and 
partly because he was always in a hurry. 

He lived in Brooklyn, and he should have taken 
the cars across the bridge on so bitter a night — 
and the snow falling fast, too. But he knew very 
well he could never stand in the crowd on the cars 



without talking to somebody ; and he was certain 
that if he did talk, he would surely tell all about 
what made him so very, very happy, and that, of 
course, would not do. For who wanted to know his 
private affairs ? 

Naturally enough you want to know why he was 
so very, very happy, and you shall know. The 
firm for which he worked had, that very evening, 
given him twenty-five dollars for a Christmas pres- 
ent. He had expected twenty dollars, for he had 
always had that much given him ; and he had, 
days and days before, arranged for the spending 
of it. But now he had five dollars more, and for 
the first time in his life he felt the delicious inde- 
cision which he knew every millionaire must feel 
as to how to spend his money. 

All the way across the bridge he tried to think 
of the best way of spending that five dollars. Of 
course, if he had been a prudent man, he would 
have put it away in the savings-bank ; but it is just 
as well to confess at once that Ned Joyce never was 
a very prudent man, and that at Christmas time 
he was not prudent at all. 

He had not decided about the five dollars when 
he stepped off the bridge on the Brooklyn side. 
Still that was no reason why he should prolong his 
walk instead of going straight home. But he did. 
He gave the vest-pocket that held the precious 
twenty-five dollars a sounding thump with his 
pudgy hand, chuckled very gleefully and very 
loudly, and turned into Fulton street and walked 
up it, with all its merry lights winking back quiet 
Christmas jokes at him. 

What do you suppose the silly fellow was going 
to do ? Exactly what he had done every night for 
the past two weeks — look into the store windows 
and gloat over the presents he was going to buy 
for the three little Joyces snug at home in the little 
brown house. 

But first there was the butcher's. He must stop 
and find out if George Stout had got him that six- 
teen-pound turkey. Sixteen pounds ! Yes, sir ; 
sixteen pounds! Oh, well! perhaps it was a bit 
extravagant: but what of it? Christmas was 
Christmas with Ned Joyce, and he not only loved 
to look at a plump brown turkey himself, but. 
what was more important, he counted on the joy- 
ous demonstrations of Roby and Essie when they 
saw it kicking up its heels as it came, all sizzling 
and snapping, out of the oven. 

Sixteen pounds ! yes, sir. And it would have 



A SCHEMING OLD SANTA CLAUS. 



been twenty, only the oven would not hold it. 
Why, it was worth the price only to hear the 
shouts of surprise from Essie and Roby, while 
Betty, with all her twelve years and motherly 
dignity, would try to keep a straight face, all the 
time twinkling out sparks of fun across the table 
at her father ! 

Oh, well! He just had to laugh right out in 
the street at the very thought of it all. And he 
rubbed his hands merrily together as he peered 
through the frosted window of George Stout's 
butcher-shop to see if there was a specially large 
turkey hanging up there. 

And as he peered and chuckled and slapped his 
vest-pocket, he noticed a little girl by his side, also 
peering through the window. Just about his Bet- 
ty's age she was, but, dear me ! not nearly so plump. 

"Choosing your Christmas Turkey, eh?" he 
demanded, beaming pleasantly on her. 

She turned a pinched face up at him and then, 
with a pitiful sort of timidity, drew away, saying 
in a low voice : 

" No, sir." 

" No harm in it. Bless my soul ! No harm in 
it. Just what 1 'm doing." 

Now, Ned Joyce had a pleasant voice. It was 
full and round, and seemed to have a lurking laugh 
in it. As he spoke to the little girl, it was pleas- 
anter and heartier than ever, for it had struck him 
at once that there was misery in the face before 
him, and he was sympathetic in a moment — not 
dolefully, but cheerily sympathetic however. Evi- 
dently the little girl felt his friendliness, for a smile 
flitted over her lips. 

" Why," went on Ned Joyce, " I begin to think 
of my turkey weeks before it 's time to cat it. 
Yes, indeed, I do. I 'm very fond of turkey, I 
am. Are n't you ? " 

"Yes, sir, I guess so." 

"You guess so! Bless my soul! don't you 
know for sure ? " 

" No, sir," answered the little girl, drawing back 
timidly at his vehemence. 

"Tum-tum, hm-hm," hummed Ned, staring at 
the little girl in an uncomfortably fixed way. 
"You don't mean — hm-hm — You don't — Bless 
my soul, did you never taste turkey ? " 

" Not since I was a little girl." 

"A little girl! Oh! (Does n't know how it 
tastes!" murmured Ned, under his breath. "My 
goodness ! What a fine chance ! She shall know : 
she shall know.") 

He gave his vest-pocket such a vigorous thump 
that the little girl started. 

" See here ! " said he, putting his hand under 
her chin and holding her face up so that he could 
look into it. " That 's dreadful. You must never 



toll that to anybody. I 'm going to give you a 
turkey, and you must take it home to your mother 
and have her cook it for Christmas dinner. Oh, 
it 's all right, I 'm Santa Claus. People don't 
generally know it, but I am; and it 's my business 
to see that everybody has turkey for Christmas. 
Bless my heart ! Come in here, and just say to 
your mother that Santa Claus sent it. Never 
tasted turkey ! " 

"Oh, sir, how good you are ! But I have n't 
any mother." 

"Have n't you, though? That 's bad. Tell 
your father, then." 

"I have n't any father either; only little 
Jamie." 

" Only little Jamie, eh ? That 's bad, that 's very 
bad. Who takes care of you, then ? " asked Ned. 

" We take care of ourselves. Jamie is n't well, 
but he crochets beautifully. I crochet, too; and 
we get along." 

Ned Joyce was, now more than ever, sure that 
his extra five dollars had come to him by way of a 
special Providence. Here was just the chance to 
use it. And he did use it. 

He bought a turkey and a bunch of celery and a 
pint of cranberries. 

" That 's for your dinner," he said. " But how 
will you get it cooked?" 

The little girl told him of a kind neighbor that 
would gladly attend to that; and then he went to a 
store near by and bought her a warm hood, a pair 
of mittens, and a pair of rubbers, and still he had 
a dollar left out of the providential five. 

" Now, let's go get something for Jamie," he said. 
"But stop! How do we know what he wants. 
Do you know ? " 

" It '11 be a book, I 'm sure." 

"Oh, ho! a book, eh? But what book? We 
must n't get the wrong book. That would n't do. 
See here ! Take these bundles. That 's it. Now 
there 's a dollar for Jamie's book. Find out just 
what he wants, and get it for him, and say Santa 
Claus sent it. Good-night ! Merry Christmas ! " 

And giving the spot over his vest-pocket a 
sounding clap, Ned went off at a trot, laughing 
and chuckling harder than ever. 

Such spirits as he was in after that ! Every time 
he came to a slide on the sidewalk, he would " take 
it," in " spread-eagle " style, with a jolly laugh, 
and then invite the boys to have a crack at him 
as he ran off. And every time a snow-ball struck 
him, he would laugh louder than ever. 

Well, just fancy him getting home to the little 
brown house. What a romping-lime ! Roby was 
six — Essie was four. They climbed up on him 
at once, and he tumbled them and rolled them 
about as if they had been made of India rubber, 



128 



A SCHEMING OLD SANTA CLAUS. 



[December, 



and motherly little Betty all the while putting 
on the supper and smiling demurely at them as 
if they were so many frolicsome kittens. 

All through supper and all through the going to 
bed it was just the same merry time. It is a wonder 
Roby and Essie did not giggle all night. But they 




THAT S FOR YOUR DINNER, NED SAID. 

did not. They just said their prayers, put their 
heads on their pillows, and the house was still. 

Papa Ned and Betty sat in front of the cozy 
grate fire smiling lovingly at each other until it was 
quite certain that the little ones were sound asleep. 
Then Papa Ned could not keep still any longer, 
and he told Betty all about his good fortune — how 
he had received the extra five dollars, and how he 
had spent it on the poor little girl. 

Of course, Betty npproved. It seemed to her 
that he had done the only thing he could do, 



and it certainly did look as if he had received the 
extra five dollars on purpose to make the little girl 
and Jamie know what a Christmas really could be 
like. 

" And to think," said he, slapping his vest- 
pocket gratefully, " that I could do so much and 
still have my twenty — 

my twenty — my " 

He felt in the vest- 
pocket he had so often 
slapped, and repeated 
"my twenty" several 
times over. Then a se- 
rious look fell on his 
jolly face, and he felt 
in the other pocket, say- 
ing "my twenty" more 
slowly. Then a scared 
look took the place of 
the serious one, and he 
felt in both pockets at 
once. 

Then he sprang to his 
feet and felt in his trou- 
sers-pockets ; then in his 
coat-pockets ; then in 
every one of his pock- 
ets ; then he fell on his 
knees on the floor and 
began to search. 

Betty asked for no ex- 
planation. She put the 
lamp on the floor and 
searched too. After a 
while Ned Joyce looked up 
and groaned: 

"I must have given it 
to the little girl." 
" And you don't know where she 
lives? " asked Betty. 
" No," said her father. 
■'Oh, dear! But, Papa, maybe she '11 be wait- 
ing for you on the corner where you left her." 

" Maybe she will. She looked like a good girl," 
said Ned, more cheerfully. 

He put on his hat and coat and hurried out. 
He was gone an hour, and came back looking 
very dismal. You would not have believed jolly 
Ned Joyce could look so. 



II. 



The little brown house Ned Joyce lived in had 
been a country cottage once ; but that was long 
ago. The city of Brooklyn had grown up all 
around it, and there it stood, now, nestling so 
snuglv in among the big brick houses, that tired 



A SCHEMING OLD SANTA CLAUS. 



129 



city people always felt like turning in at the gate 
as if they were sure of finding rest there. 

The Joyces could have filled every nook and 
corner of the little house, which was only two sto- 
ries high, but as they could not afford to do that, 
they occupied only the lower floor and rented the 
upper story to a Mr. Job Skecns. 

Now Job Skeens was as unlike Ned Joyce as you 
can imagine. There was, indeed, just such a 
difference between them as there was between 
the parts of the house they lived in. The lower 
story was broad and low and cheery-looking ; 
so was Ned Joyce. The 
upper story, having a 
gable roof, was narrow 
and peaked and gave 
you an uncomfortable 
feeling of being full of 
sharp corners to bump 
against, — for all the 
world like Job Skeens. 

He was very tall and 
very lean. His neck 
was so long that it kept 
his head lifted high up 
above his coat collar ; 
his wrists were long, 
and his hands were 
bony, and his laugh 
was thin, dry, and sar- 
castic — very different 
from jolly Ned's. 

The Joyces had very 
little to do with Mr. 
Skeens. They had once 
asked him to take sup- 
per with them and after- 
ward spend the evening, 
but his queer looks and 
awkward ways so puz- 
zledand disturbed them 
that the experiment 
was never tried again. 

Of course, then, you 
can believe he was not the man Ned Joyce would 
choose for a comforter in his trouble. And, in 
fact, he would not even have spoken to him about 
it, had it not so happened that he met him at the 
gate next morning as both were going to business. 

"Well! You don't look happy this morning, 
Mr. Joyce," said Mr. Skeens, in his vinegary 
voice, seeming positively pleased to see his usually 
jolly neighbor looking dismal. 

'"' I don't feel happy, either, Mr. Skeens," an- 
swered Ned, dolefully. 

"Sickness in the family? eh?" 

It seemed to Ned that Mr. Skeens asked this 
Vol. XIV. — 9. 



question with an air of pleased expectation, and, 
really, he felt like striking him for it. However, 
he restrained himself, and answered shortly : 
"No, sir, thank you ! we all are well." 
With that he would have left Mr. Skeens; but 
that disagreeable fellow would not be left, and he 
so pestered Ned with his questions, that at last the 
poor fellow told him the whole story. Mr. Skeens 
listened with many a grimace, and, when Ned was 
through, he exclaimed in his chuckling way: 

"Why don't you draw some money out of the 
bank ? You '11 never see your twenty dollars again." 




"I .MUST HAVE GIVEN 



" I have no money in the bank," said Ned, sadly. 

" Then you can't have any Christmas presents, 
eh ?" suggested Mr. Skeens. 

"Not unless I find my money," Ned replied. 

" Oh, you '11 never find it ! " said Mr. Skeens, 
adding with his most unpleasant laugh: "And 
your presents were all selected, too, eh?" 

" They were, sir," said Ned, indignantly 
I don't see anything in that to laugh at." 

"Of course not — he-he — of course not. 
you '11 have to countermand the turkey. 



"but 

And 
too." 



And Mr. Skeens seemed positively to glow with 
pleasure. 



130 



SCHEMING OLD SANTA CLAUS. 



[December, 



"Good-morning, sir," said Ned, warmly; "I 
could n't laugh at any man's misfortunes." 

But Mr. Skeens laughed many times more that 
day, in his sarcastic style, as he sat in the dingy 
cellar, not far from Fulton street, where he kept a 
second-hand book-store. But finally something 
happened which made him chuckle with even 
greater delight. 

Late in the afternoon a little girl came in and asked 
him if he had a copy of the "Arabian Nights." 

" Yes," he replied; but he did not move to get it 
for her. 

" May I see it?" she asked timidly. 

" Third shelf, fifth book," he said, pointing to 
the place. 

She reached up, took the book down, and 
opened it. 

"It has n't any pictures," she said. 

" I did n't say it had," said Mr. Skeens. 

" I want one with pictures," she said. 

"Fourth book further on, same shelf. Price, 
seventy-five cents," said the bookseller grimly, 
glancing at her over his spectacles. 

" Oh, yes ! " said the girl, opening the book. 
" I know Jamie would like this better." 

These words were said to herself, but Mr. Skeens 
heard them; and in an instant he was out of his 
chair, staring hard at his little customer. For her 
appearance and her mention of " Jamie " recalled 
Ned Joyce's story of that morning ; and now, as she 
turned the leaves of the book, Mr. Skeens, looking 
closely at her, saw that she held in one hand a 
twenty-dollar bill. 

" The very same girl, I '11 wager ! ' he exclaimed 
under his breath ; and, stepping forward, he peered 
down into her face and demanded : 

" Did n't you get that twenty dollars last night 
from a little fat man ? " 

"Why — ye — yes, sir," she faltered in a ter- 
rible fright. "I — I was going to watch for him 
to-night." 

" Oh, to be sure! very likely — quite probable. 
What 's your name ? " he asked. 

" Molly Findley, sir. I was going to — indeed, 
I was. Here is the dollar bill ; he gave me this 
one and told me to buy the book. He dropped the 
other, and I did n't see it at first. Do you know 
him ? " 

" Know him ? Indeed I do. Here, give me that 
money," he demanded. "Or no." he added, as 
Molly held back hesitating, yet alarmed, " tell me 
where you live. I '11 see him and let him know 
where he can find his money." Mr. Skeens laid 
his long fingers on Molly's shoulder. " You 
seem like an honest child," he said, "but I think, 
after all, I 'd better shut up shop and go along 
with you to see if your story is true." 



1 1 was after he had been home with Mollie and had 
returned to his cellar, that he gave way to his glee. 

" What luck ! " he piped, in his thin voice, " for 
me to find his twenty dollars. I '11 see that he 
does n't get 'em before Christmas. He would n't 
laugh at another man's misfortunes. O no ! But 
I would. I must have a look at him to-night. 
How nice and dismal he did look ! " 

And, true enough, when he went home that 
night with Ned Joyce's twenty-dollar bill in his 
pocket, he knocked at the door, and then poked 
his head in to say, with a smile : 

" Countermanded that turkey, yet ? " 

III. 

Yes, Ned Joyce had countermanded the turkey. 
He had very bravely gone into the butcher-shop, 
and said: 

" George, I can't take that turkey — that sixteen- 
pounder, you " 

There he broke down, and, with a pathetic wave 
of his hand, rushed out into the street. He turned 
out of the bright avenue, with a groan, and plunged 
despairingly up the first dark street. He was afraid 
he would see the presents he had so long before 
selected. 

When he reached the little brown house, he did 
not hurry boisterously in, as was his custom. He 
stopped and looked as if he would like to run away. 
Three times he put his hand on the gate before 
he could summon the courage to open it. 

Oh, but it was dreadful when he got inside, and 
was seized by the expectant Roby and Essie for the 
usual frolic ! Of course he could not spoil their 
fun. so he tumbled them and rolled them, and 
laughed laughs that passed current with the babies, 
but sounded almost hideous to him. And when 
a hollow, dismal sigh would slip out in spite of 
him, he would pass it off for a joke, and try to do 
it again in a sportive way. 

These sighs, being an entirely new feature of 
their fun, pleased Roby and Essie mightily, and 
they took to sighing with great gusto. 

All this was hard enough to bear, but it was as 
nothing compared to what followed when they were 
all seated at the table and the conversation turned 
upon Santa Claus, and what he was going to give 
them. This very topic was the one in which poor 
Ned had always before had a great deal of joy. 
That night every mention of Santa Claus fell like 
a lump of lead on his heart. 

It was a marvel how he lived through the days 
that came before Christmas without betraying 
himself to the babies. Betty would have had him 
stop pretending to be jolly with them, but he would 
not listen to such a thing. 

Mr. Skeens was waiting at the gate the morn- 



i8S6.] 



A SCHEMING OLD SANTA CLAUS. 



I3T 



ing before Christmas when Ned came out of 
the house. If there had been any other way of 
getting out, Ned would have turned back ; but 
as that was the only way, he kept on and tried 
to pass Mr. Skeens. 

"No news of the money yet, eh?" said the 
latter, barring the gate-way by leaning upon it 
with his long body. 

" Not any,'' said Ned. 

" Then, I suppose, you wont have much use for 
your kitchen to-morrow, eh ? " 

" No, sir," said Ned, mournfully. 

" Of course not! Well, I thought I 'd have a 
dinner-party to-morrow. Think of me having 
a dinner-party ! And I thought that, seeing you 
had no turkey nor anything like a Christmas, you 
might let me have the use of your stove, eh ?" 

Almost anybody else would have refused, but 
Ned did not. He said, "Yes." Whereat Mr. 
Skeens grinned and went on : 

" I 'm going to have quite a party, and my 
rooms are a little small, you know. I s'pose you 
wont mind letting me use your back room as a 
dining-room, eh?" 

" You may have it." 

"And I don't know much about cooking turkey," 
Mr. Skeens went on. " Do you suppose I could 
get your Betty, now, to cook mine for me, eh ? " 

There was a sudden flash in Ned's mild eye. and 
he hesitated a moment. Then he said very gently : 

" Yes, Betty will cook it for you." 

Mr. Skeens's delight at this assent was so great 
as to be inexpressible for more than a minute. 
He went through so many of his awkward grins 
and gestures that the three children watching at 
the window began to feel very uncomfortable. 

" My turkey 's a big one," he said ; " I 'II agree to 
match that sixteen-pounder that you had to give 
up. I '11 send the things home to-day." 

Ned stared at him a moment, and then turned 
away. 

" He 's just trying to make us feel as badly as he 
can," he thought. 

But there was no need for such an attempt, for 
nothing Job Skeens might do could make poor 
Ned feel any worse. It was simply impossible to 
be more unhappy than was he that Christmas Eve 
and night. He dreaded the coming of morning, 
when he should see the disappointment of the 
babies upon learning that Santa Claus — the Santa 
Claus from whom he himself had taught them to 
expect Christmas gifts — had passed them by. 

But it made no difference how much he dreaded 
it, that morning would come just as morning 
always comes. And when it did come, it found him 
fast asleep. He had felt so unhappy that he had 
not supposed he could sleep at all, but he did. 



To be sure, his sleep did not do him much good, 
for he had the most harrowing dreams of Roby and 
Essie refusing to kiss him because he had deceived 
them about Santa Claus; and when, in his sor- 
row, he groaned dismally, it seemed as if those 
precious babies mocked him in a series of the 
most awful groans he had ever heard, in the midst 
of which sounded Job Skeens's jeering chuckle, 
pitched appallingly high, and prolonged into a 
sort of shriek. 

But just then he heard Betty's cheery voice. 
"Oh, Popsy," she said, "do get up quick. The 
most wonderful thing has happened ! Don't you 
hear Roby and Essie?" 

"Why, to be sure. That's what I took for 
groans, I suppose." 

Now you can imagine the horror of the 
sounds he had heard in his dream ; for Roby and 
Essie were performing with all their might and 
main, the one on a drum and the other on a tin 
horn. 

" Very likely," said Betty ; " but do come quick, 
Popsy." 

" What is it ? " asked Ned, staring as if he were 
not yet sure that he was awake. 

"Oh, I can't tell you ! You must come." 

It would be useless — simply useless to try to 
describe what Ned Joyce felt or thought when he 
looked into the dining-room. And this you will 
not doubt when you know what he saw. 

The room was literally piled with Christmas 
presents. Piled is the only word for it. It was 
just as if Santa Claus had emptied his bundles 
right into the room. And there were Roby and 
Essie, exactly as they had tumbled out of bed, 
prancing about from one thing to another, shriek- 
ing and squealing with delight, and all the time 
keeping up the drumming and horn-blowing as if 
they could not stop. 

After Ned had vigorously rubbed his eyes, to 
make sure that he was awake, he turned to Betty 
and stared at her. She stared back. 

"Well!" gasped he, "where did they come 
from ?" 

" I don't know. I heard the children shouting 
and screaming, and came in here, and there they 
were with all these things. They say Santa Claus 
brought them ; but they are truly meant for us, for 
here are our names on the bundles." 

Ned looked solemn for a moment, then a bright 
smile broke over his face, and he beamed on Betty 
like his old jolly self, and said with a grateful 
quaver in his voice : 

" I don't know who sent them, or how they 
came here, Betty, but let 's enjoy them and be 
thankful." 

Whoever put the things there, or how they could 



132 



A SCHEMING OLD SANTA CLAUS. 



[December, 



be put there, was a mystery which only grew 
greater as they tried to solve it. But it was evi- 
dent that the affair had been carefully planned, 
for every one received just the most fitting gifts. 

If any one had been specially favored, perhaps 
it was Betty ; and it seemed to her that she had 
everything she could possibly wish for. 

" Why," said Ned in amazement, as he exam- 
ined all the presents, '"I never saw such a Christ- 
mas in my life ! " 

He even decided that the turkey, now, was not 
worth a regret, and he declared that he must help 
get Mr. Skeens's dinner. Never was there such 
fun in the jolly Joyce household as when Ned put 
on abig apron — big for Betty, but small for him — 
and installed himself as assistant cook. It is a 
wonder Betty did anything right with those three 
children under her feet all the time. 

But she did ; dear me, yes, she did. Ask any of 
Mr. Skeens"s guests of that day, if ever they ate a 
better dinner than that little twelve-year-old cook 
prepared for them. But about those guests of Mr. 
Skeens. They ought to be mentioned. Yes. in- 
deed, they ought to be mentioned, at least. Not 
that they have anything to do with the story — oh, 
no ! But they ought to be mentioned. 

They began to arrive at half-past twelve. The 
bell rang, and the Joyces waited to let Mr. Skeens 
admit his guests. But the bell rang, and rang, 
and he did not come down ; so Betty ran to the 
door, while Ned hurried off his apron and went 
into the dining-room to welcome the inhospitable 
Mr. Skeens's guests. And how do you suppose 
he did it ? The moment he saw them he cried 
out : 

" Why ! why ! Bless my soul ! " 

And a prolonged and joyous " oh-h-h ! " was the 
reception he had. The next moment there was 
such a talking as you will never hear outside of the 
Joyce house. 

The guests were Molly Findley and her little 
brother Jamie. 

" How did you find me ? " cried Ned. 
'I did n't find you. 1 was invited here to din- 
ner, and I was to give you this." 

" This" was an envelope, which Ned tore open 
at once. Of course, a twenty-dollar bill was inside 
of it. 

" He told me to give it to you," said Molly. 

" He ? Who 's he ? " demanded Ned. 

''Why, the gentleman who invited us here. 
Where is he?" said Molly. 

"A gentleman? — who invited you? — Who 
can it be? — What does he look like?" asked 
Ned. 

" He 's a tall man. He keeps a second-hand 
book-store on " 



'■ Mr. Skeens ! " interrupted Betty, with a shout 
of astonishment. 

For just one moment, Ned held his head in his 
hands as if he were afraid of losing it. Then he 
tore out of the door and bounded upstairs and 
thumped like mad on Mr. Skeens's door. 

" Stop that noise. Whatd' ye want? " snapped 
Mr. Skeens. 

"I want you. Open the door!" and Ned 
twisted and turned the knob and pushed the door 
as if he would stop at nothing to get in. 

"I wont open the door. Go 'way ! " snarled 
Mr. Skeens. 

" I wont go away. I '11 break the door down if 
you don't let me in. Indeed I will," shouted Ned. 

There was so little doubt that Ned was in earnest, 
that Mr. Skeens said : 

" Don't be silly, then. Don't be silly." 

" I wont be silly," cried Ned. 

Mr. Skeens had evidently been afraid that Ned 
would come after him, and had barricaded the 
door; for Ned could hear him moving chairs and 
heavy objects away from it. 

All the while, Ned was dancing excitedly up 
and down on the landing ; and all the chddren, 
with wide-open eyes and mouths, were staring up 
at him. 

When the door finally opened, Ned gave one 
jump and caught the long Mr. Skeens in his arms, 
and, somehow or other, got him downstairs and 
into the dining-room. 

" Now, now — don't be silly. Don't be silly," 
said Mr. Skeens, looking both happy and uncom- 
fortable. 

" I wont, oh, I wont ! " said Ned, catching one 
of Mr. Skeens's ungainly hands and shaking it 
vigorously ; "but I 've found you out. Betty, we 've 
found him out — eh, Betty? Roby ! Essie! Here's 
Santa Claus. Here he is ! Just think of it ! Roby, 
Essie, here he is — here 's the Santa Claus that gave 
you all those fine things." 

Betty slipped up to the awkward-looking man and 
took his other hand gently in her little hands and 
smiled gratefully up into his face. 

Roby and Essie, having too little penetration to 
discover the meaning of all the fuss, retreated 
together to the other side of the room and stared 
silently. '■ A scheming old Santa Claus, is n't he, 
now?" cried Ned, again shaking the bony hand. 

The sound rather than the sense of the words 
seemed to strike Roby's fancy, for he nodded his 
head violently, and cried out with an odd look on 
his face, " Yes, Popsy, that 's just what he is, — 
a skinny old Santa Claus ! " he said. 

Whereupon everybody but Mr. Skeens was hor- 
ror-struck. He seemed not to mind it at all, but 
spoke up at once : 



A SCHEMING OLD SANTA CLAUS. 



133 



"Of course," he said, "the chimneys are so 
small nowadays it has pulled me all out of shape 
getting down them." 

Then he chuckled in his peculiar way, which 
somehow did not seem forbidding now ; and he 
smiled at jolly Ned, and they both laughed — each 
in his own way — at Roby's innocent little joke. 

After which they had dinner as quickly as ever 
Betty could serve it, for, come to find out, the guests 



How did those Christmas presents get into our 
rooms ? " 

At this question Mr. Skecns chuckled in his 
drollest way, and, looking across the table at Ned, 
he drew a key from his pocket and said : 
" Here 's the key to your back room, sir." 
Ned laughed knowingly, and reached out to take 
it. But, suddenly checking himself, he withdrew 
his hand and said in his most hearty manner: 




YE VE FOUND Hl.M OUT 



EXCLAIMED NED. 



were only Molly and Jamie and the Joyces. Of 
course, a plate was put on for Mr. Skeens, though 
he had not thought before of eating with them. 

But, in the midst of the dinner, Ned suddenly 
abandoned his knife and fork, leaned back in his 
chair, and exclaimed : 

"I 've a bone to pick with you, Mr. Skeens. 



" No, thank you. Keep it, my good friend. 
Nobody's door is ever closed to Santa Clans ! " 

Do you know what the Joyces discovered? That 
Job Skeens, in spite of his queer looks and eccentric 
ways, was as tender-hearted and good — that is 
almost, not quite as good — as Popsy Joyce himself. 



134 



FOR CHILDREN DEAR. 



[December, 



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FOR CHILDREN DEAR. 



135 






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3et out p>i- distant Harrow 

iAitd close by tl-f Tree., 

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136 



FOR CHILDREN DEAR. 



[December, 



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ylrul anctlxcr tree , 
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1886-1 



FOR CHILDREN DEAR. 



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138 



JUAN AND JUAXITA. 



[Decemeer, 




JUAN AND JUANITA. 
By Frances C. Baylor. 



Chapter II. 

How is it possible to paint the grief of the poor 
Senora, the gentle, affectionate mother on whom 
had fallen so heavy a calamity ? 

First one neighbor and then another rushed in, 
ashy pale, terrified, incoherent, bringing ever more 
and more dreadful news, as the night came on, of 
her losses and of theirs. Upon hearing that her 
husband had been killed, and that her children 
were missing, the poor soul gave one heartrend- 
ing scream, and, fainting, lay as one dead for so 
long that she was supposed at one time to have 
gone beyond the reach of sorrow. But at last the 
dark eyes opened again, and with memory came 
anguish unutterable. 

" Oh, tell me ! where are they? Oh, my chil- 
dren ! My little ones ! " she cried out to the circle 
of sympathizers gathered at the hacienda, as she 
paced to and fro weeping and wringing her hands, 
or cast herself down on the floor in despair. 

When daylight came, she, with old Santiago 
and one of the herders, went out into the coun- 
try and looked everywhere for some trace of 
the children. But hours and hours of search re- 
vealed nothing except Juan's hat, which had fallen 
off in his encounter with the squaw. Early as it 
was, Don Jose's body had been already taken up 
by the neighbors. And that afternoon it was borne 
away by a small cavalcade of horsemen into Santa 
Rosa, where it was buried in the little plot of 
ground attached to the Church of the Conception. 

Slowly and sidly the days went by for the 
Senora, days of weeping, of endurance, of patient 
toil. For some things she had no heart. The 
serapa, on which she had expended such loving 
care, remained unfinished. The flowers, uncared 
for, bloomed and spread, or withered and died, 
as the case might be. There were no songs 
now in the hacienda, but every moment of wak- 
ing thought with the Senora was an inarticu- 
late prayer for Juan and Juanita. Of the boy, it 
comforted her to remember that he was strong, 
active, courageous. If he were in captivity with 



the Indians, he would not suffer as a delicate child 
would have done. He might even shield and pro- 
tect his little sister. But poor little Juanita — 
at thought of her, so young, timid, helpless, the 
Sehora's eyes always overflowed. 

As for the ranchcros who had followed the 
Indians, they soon returned. The pursuit of 
Comanches by Mexicans at any time, is much like 
that of a hawk by a canary, and when the Indians 
have the advantage of twelve hours' start in flight, 
the pursuers might as well expect to overtake a 
thunder-bolt. 

So when the ranchcros went clattering over the 
stony streets of Santa Rosa in the early morning, 
the Indians felt themselves already out of danger, 
and were leisurely taking their way toward the Rio 
Grande, with the intention of crossing that river 
and going up to the head-waters of the Colorado, 
in northern Texas. This was their abiding-place, — 
one can scarcely say home, for that word, so full 
of sacred and civilized associations, has little in 
common with the mountain lair in which those sav- 
ages spent the intervals between their murderous 
forays. But, like Issachar. these wandering tribes 
know where to couch as well as when to spring, 
and there is no more beautiful country than that 
lying between the two great rivers, the Brazos and 
the Colorado, where they enter the Llanos Esta- 
cados.* It is a country of bold canons and lovely 
valleys abounding in game, — bears, deer, turkeys, 
antelopes, — with wild bees swarming in every rocky 
cliff and feeding upon the wild plum, which blooms 
there in great variety of color and size, and upon 
the wild grape, which perfumes the air for miles 
with its delicious odor. 

Near one of the many clear lakes that industrious 
beavers have created throughout that region (a 
tranquil sheet of water, overshadowed by tall cot- 
ton-wood trees and graceful willows, with silvery, 
many-tinted fish leaping, gliding, winding in its 
cool depths) the Comanches came at last to a full 
halt, after a journey that had sorely tried their lit- 
tle captives. The horses, cattle, and sheep that had 
been stolen were turned out to pasture, as were the 



• The Staked Pk 



JUAN AND J U A N I T A . 



139 



jaded animals the savages had ridden. There 
was nothing to do now but to eat, sleep, rest, and 
get ready for another raid on the frontier settle- 
ments. The encampment was reached at night, 
and the children, half dead with fatigue, were 
taken to the lodge of their protector, the old Chief 
Shaneco, where they at once dropped off into a 
sleep of profound exhaustion that lasted ten hours. 

When Juanita opened her eyes next morning, she 
was quite dazed, and could not at first make out 
where she was. The first object that she saw was 
a familiar one. It was Amigo, who had spent the 
night curled up at her feet ; now advancing, 
he poked his nose into her face and began to 
lick her right cheek. Juanita pushed him away 
and sat up, rubbing her eyes. She then began to 
look about her, and her glance wandered from the 
sleeping Juan to the skins stretched over poles 
that formed the walls of the lodge, and to Shaneco 
snoring loudly opposite, apparently a mere heap 
of buckskin and blanket. In a Hash, the past 
came back to her, and she was throbbing with 
tumultuous emotions, — love, grief, fear, despair. 
So bitter were the memories of her mother, home, 
and past happiness, that the tears could not be 
kept back, and she cried loud enough to wake 
Juan, if not the chief, although she made several 
convulsive efforts at repression. Juan put his 
arms about her and called her his " querida 
hermanita,"* kissed and embraced her, and did 
all he could to soothe her. Even Amigo under- 
stood that something was wrong, and, thrusting his 
rough head against her shoulder, looked up into 
her face and whined uneasily. 

The truth was that Amigo had his misgivings 
from the first about the Comanche journey. When 
the children were put upon the horses, he perfectly 
comprehended that it was not the proper place for 
them, and barked furiously for a while. But hav- 
ing thus made public his disapproval of the proceed- 
ings, and finding that no one paid the slightest 
attention to his remonstrance, he very sensibly 
held his peace; and during the journey that fol- 
lowed, he trotted patiently in the wake of the com- 
pany, determined, no doubt, to be the guardian 
and protector of Juan and Juanita, come what 
might. 

The three friends were still comforting one 
another by love, expressed as plainly in Amigo's 
honest eyes as by Juan's lips, and were still caress- 
ing one another, when the squaw glanced in and saw 
them. She beckoned to the children to come out- 
side. They obeyed, and, picking up a piece of 
mezquite wood, she pointed toward a thicket at a 
little distance and made them understand that they 
were to go there and get the fuel she needed. 

The children came back with their arms full 



of mezquite, and were then given their first lesson 
in Comanche housekeeping, and with many blow : s 
from the squaw were taught how to build a fire 
in the Indian fashion. Old Shaneco was never 
cruel to the little captives, and was sometimes even 
kind, but his young wife was a shrew, and a hard 
taskmistrcss to two children who had been accus- 
tomed to do very much as they pleased, and had 
never known what it was to be harshly treated. 

They suffered very much, indeed, from the hard- 
ships of their new life, and from homesickness 
and the utter want of anything like kindness or 
sympathy; but when to these hardships were added 
slavery, endless tasks, and constant beatings, it 
is no wonder that they were utterly wretched and 
felt that they could not bear it. 

The poor, foolish little rebels could think of 
but one way out of their troubles, and that was to 
run away. They ran away accordingly, and were, 
of course, almost immediately recaptured, and so 
dreadfully punished that they were in no hurry to 
repeat the experiment. The desire for freedom, 
the passionate longing to return home, remained 
indeed, and strengthened as time went on ; but 
they had been taught by their recent experience 
how completely they were in the power of their 
enemies, and dimly realized that they would have 
to be a great deal older, wiser, and stronger, before 
they could cope successfully with them. 

The image of their mother, alone and ever-sor- 
rowful, never left the children ; and they were 
constantly picturing to themselves a joyful reunion. 
They talked of it when they were alone, and to- 
gether made their simple plansfor bringing it about. 

" I will learn all that I can from the Indians, and 
when we get big we will give them the slip ; and 
if they overtake us, I will kill four or five chiefs, 
and the others will get frightened and run away, 
and then I will take you to our mother and say, 
' Here is Juanita brought back to you, dear 
Mother!'" In this way Juan would often de- 
claim to his sister with simple boastfulness. 

" And I will look everywhere for blackberries, 
and save them up to eat on the way. But you 
must wait until some time when Casteel is on the 
war-path. I am so afraid of Casteel," Juanita 
would reply. 

" I am not afraid of Casteel. If he ever troubles 
me, I will run a spear into him, and shoot him, 
and cut off his head," said Juan, with more spirit 
than truth ; for he was afraid of Casteel, but, like 
many older and wiser folk, he naturally wished to 
make a good figure in an encounter which was 
purely imaginary. 

It has been seen, though, that Juan was a bold, 
courageous lad, and happily he was not long 
enough under the cruel rule of Shaneco's wife to 



■ Dear little sister. 



140 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 



[December, 



lose this fine natural temper and develop into a 
timid, cowed creature, afraid of everything; for 
in the second year of his captivity she died. 

After that, things went more smoothly at the 
lodge. Instead of being treated as captives, Juan 
and his sister were now made as much a part of 




the tribe as though they had been born in it, and 
Shaneco may be said to have directed their edu- 
cation, which, if different from that of civilized chil- 
dren, was far more valuable to our little Mexicans 
than any that Paris or London could have afforded, 



as will appear later. And it was founded on sounder 
principles than those of many civilized parents and 
guardians, since it was admirably suited to their 
needs, and fitted these young savages perfectly 
for the life they were to lead. Truth to tell, Sha- 
neco had gradually come to feel a certain interest 
in the white-faced little 
girl, whose gentle, pretty 
ways, obedience, and 
youth disarmed hostility, 
and for the intelligent 
boy, who was so eager to 
leain all that his savage 
guardian could teach that 
it is a wonder no suspicion 
of what was in Juan's mind 
ever entered the brain of 
his crafty teacher. 

The children were now 
much happier,and showed 
it, which doubtless gave 
Shaneco the idea that they 
were quite reconciled to 
the prospect of becoming 
Comanches and had for- 
gotten, or soon would for- 
get, all about their old 
home. He knew too, al- 
though the children did 
not, all the difficulties that 
would attend any attempt 
to escape to the settlements 
— perils great enough to 
daunt the bravest man — 
a wilderness of three hun- 
dred miles to traverse; 
hunger, thirst, exposure, 
ending in almost certain 
death .either by starvation, 
or by violence from savage 
tribes, or from wild beasts 
scarcely more savage. 
That two children, with- 
out horses, arms, or older 
companions, should dream 
of taking such a journey 
never occurred to him; 
and, indeed, if they had 
been anything except chil- 
dren, and, as such, igno- 
rant of its dangers and 
risks, they never would 
have entertained the plan for a moment. But, 
having come to them, the idea struck its roots 
ever deeper, and it became at last a fixed resolve ; 
and even when, as they grew older, some of the dif- 
ficulties of the undertaking became known to them, 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 



HI 



they refused to recognize them as insurmount- 
able, and would not give up their long-cherished 
plan. 

Even among his Indian playfellows, Juan soon 
became conspicuous for his activity and endurance, 
his strength, courage, and skill, whether shown in 
running, leaping, swimming, wrestling, climbing. 
or in more serious occupations. Sharieco often felt 
proud of him, though he never said so, at least 
to Juan. But the boy understood the grunt of 
approval, and the gleam of warmth that came 
into the warrior's cold eyes when Juan ran like a 
lizard up to the very top of a fine cotton-wood, 
and then dropped swiftly from branch to branch 
until he lightly sprang to earth and stood again 
by Shaneco's side, radiant and breathless ; or when 
he borrowed the chief's bow and arrow for a mo- 
ment, and made a shot that would not have dis- 
graced any man in the tribe. 

Naturally a manly lad, he took very kindly to 
the hardy, open-air life, and, besides, had set him- 
self in earnest to excel ; while Shaneco, seeing only 
the result, and not the motive, thought that the 
wisdom of his decision to spare the children was 
justified. At such times he would turn an " I 
told you so ! " glance upon Casteel, who had been 
of the capturing party, and had been opposed to 
taking any prisoners ; as he was opposed to the 
introduction of any foreign element into the tribe. 
He would have knocked cither of the children upon 
the head as soon as fill his pipe, had they not pos- 
sessed a powerful protector. Many a kick and cuff 
did he give them as it was, and there was a re- 
strained brutality in his manner toward them that 
quite subjugated Juanita and made her tremble 
when she heard his step. It was chiefly owing to 
his counsels and distrust that Juan was never 
allowed to carry any weapon except a toy-bow 
and its arrows, with which, however, he practiced 
incessantly and became so expert that the more 
good-natured of the warriors willingly lent him 
their bows, now and then, taking good care to 
keep an eye on him all the while. 

At that time not many guns or fixed ammunition 
were in the hands of the Indians. A bow was still 
indispensable to a warrior, and a good one was con- 
sidered equivalent in value to a well-trained war- 
horse. 

The more proficient Juan became with his toy- 
bow, the more discontented he grew with its 
limited capacities, and the more he longed for his 
ideal bow. This should be one like Shaneco's, 
made of the best wood, without a flaw or knot in it, 
as light and as strong as steel, yet elastic ; with its 
quiver beautifully ornamented with beads and eagle 

(To b, 



feathers, and the claws of a mountain lion and a 
grizzly bear ; furnished, moreover, with the best ar- 
rows, striped in gaudy colors and prettily feathered 
with the feathers of the yellow-hammer. It was true 
that Juan had killed many a quail and rabbits, 
squirrels, and small game without end, and had 
even knocked the feathers out of a wild turkey ; 
but what was that compared with what he could 
do if he only had a proper bow ? The very sight 
of Shaneco's filled Juan with envious irritation. 
All his sport in the present, and all his hopes for 
the future, depended on his getting such a bow, 
and how to get it was a problem he was always 
trying to solve. He spent hours in thinking about 
it, and sighed profoundly because he had no war- 
horse to give in exchange for one. He knew that 
he had neither the skill nor the chance to make 
one. He begged for one repeatedly, only invari- 
ably to be refused, until he despaired of getting 
one, and was always pouring his woe and want 
and grievous disappointment into Juanita's sympa- 
thetic ears. 

"How am I ever to take you home with this 
thing?" he would say, kicking his bow contempt- 
uously away a yard or two. 

" Sh — h ! speak Spanish ! " she replied, looking 
anxiously around to see whether they were over- 
heard. Both had rapidly picked up the Comanche 
tongue, and they only reverted to their own lan- 
guage when they were alone. 

"It is not such a bad bow. I shot a rabbit with 
it this morning. And it is all you have," she 
added. 

" But don't I tell you that we shall be prisoners 
forever unless I can get a better ? " he said im- 
patiently. 

" Be patient, Juan ; perhaps Shaneco will teach 
you how to make one, or give you one," she said, 
to cheer him. 

"No, no! he never will,'' replied Juan discon- 
solately. ' ' What shall I do ? " 

And the boy was right. Shaneco taught Juan 
a great many things — how to snare quail and rab- 
bits, how to fish and shoot, how to imitate the cry 
of wild turkeys, how to follow an enemy's trail, 
and prevent the latter from returning the compli- 
ment, how to travel at night by the stars, and in the 
daytime by the sun and by the moss growing on 
the trees, and much other woodcraft ; but the 
chief never let his protege have a bow such as he 
coveted, and finally showed displeasure when urged 
to grant the request. There was nothing for Juan 
to do but bide his time, and, afraid of arousing 
suspicion, he at last dropped the subject altogether, 
but was none the less resolved to get that bow. 
■ontimted. ) 



142 



A CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY. 



[December, 



A CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY. 
By Rose Lattimore Alling. 




Very animated sounds 
of conversation and 
a strong smell of 
turpentine filled the 
air. The girls were 
gilding baskets, and 
every one was try- 
ing to see how near 
she could come to 
telling a secret with- 
out quite doing it. 
" Your present, 
Floy, is just over 
there in the draw- 
er," said Nellie, at whose house her two friends 
were spending the afternoon. 

"Let me see," reflected Floy. "If it is in so 
small a place, it is n't a house and lot, as I had 
hoped." 

" Nor a phaeton." added Madge. 
" No, nor a pony. Nellie, I am disappointed — 
it must be something quite minute — hum, is it a 
foot long ? " Floy asked. 
" No," Nellie laughed. 
" Six inches ? " 

Nell measured with her fingers under the edge 
of the table, and said she thought not. 

"Well, then, it is nearly six inches," Floy cried 
triumphantly ; " and as there are n't many things so 
small, I 'm going to guess ! Is it animal, vegetable, 
or mineral ? " 

The three brushes were suspended, while Nell 
answered slowly, " mineral." 

"Ah — not quite six inches long — and min- 
eral " 

" Hat-pin," Madge suggested. 
Nell laughed, but feeling that the strings of the 
bag that held her cat were getting rather loose, 
she begged that the guessing stop. 

"Allright," assented Floy, "only I think I know, 
but I wont tell ; would you gild this handle gold or 
bronze ? But my present for you represents two 
kingdoms — mineral and animal" 

"Mineral and animal," Nell repeated. "Oh, I 
know, a leathern box with a brass key ! " 
"No, try again." 
" A purse with a metal clasp ? " 
" No, no," exclaimed Floy excitedly, " but let's 
stop this, it would be so horrid really to know." 

" But it 's fun to almost know, and I have n't 
had a chance to guess vet." 



" You'll get just what you most wish for," said 
Floy. 

" Then I shall be happy indeed ! " exclaimed 
Madge, adding mischievously: "Let me see, I '11 
get some new furs, a silver button-hook, a little 
candlestick to go with my birthday seal, a cut-glass 
smelling-bottle, a new writing-desk, and, well, 
several other mere trifles." 

" Modest demands, I 'm sure ! Peihaps I 'il get 
them all for you ; one so easily pleased should be 
gratified," said Floy, while she and Nell exchanged 
significant glances and smiled mysteriously at 
Madge. 

For, of course, Nell knew what Floy had for 
Madge, and what Madge had for Floy; Floy knew 
what Nell had for Madge, and what Madge had 
for Nell ; while Madge knew what Nell had for 
Floy, and what Floy had for Nell ; and with this 
bewildering lot of profound secrets, every girl 
felt in a delightfully uncertain state as to whether 
she were confiding the right thing to the right 
person or not. That very afternoon, had not Nell 
thought she should "just die of fright " ? She was 
fitting a little candle into the little candlestick 
which she had bought for Madge, when she heard 
Floy coming upstairs ; she knew it was Floy, 
she heard her voice ; nevertheless she cried out 
in terror, " Oh, Madge, don't come in ! Did you 
see it? Oh, dear, I believe you did ! " And, flying 
wildly toward the bureau, she suddenly stopped and 
said in a tone of disgust, "What a goose I am! 
Of course you can come in ; I forgot you were not 
Madge, and I was looking straight at you, too ! " 

" And it is the candlestick I helped you to 
select ! " shouted Floy, sinking into a chair weak 
with laughter. 

After every one of the three had almost let the 
others peep figuratively into the box or closet 
where her gifts were stowed, yet leaving in the 
mind of each a more tantalizing and fascinating 
doubt than before, they settled down to steady 
work, glorifying splint-baskets, and cones, and old 
oil bottles, and fingers, till Madge broke out again : 

" Oh, Nell, have you anything for Belle Nash ? " 

"No, I have n't ! Why?" 

"Because she has something for you; she 
showed it to me." 

"You don't say so! Why, I wonder what 
put it into her head to give me anything. Dear 
me ! then I shall have to give her something. 
Sometimes I think Christmas is a nuisance." 



A CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY. 



H- 



Nellie said this, as she finished her last basket, 
with a sigh, and then, after pouring out more var- 
nish, she continued: "It is give and take, and 
take and give, and each is so afraid of being out- 
done by others that she spends more than she 
ought." 

" And," Floy interrupted, " it is like paying off 
a lot of creditors." 

" I suppose it is n't the true spirit of giving," 
Madge remarked, " for we must admit that we 
ought to love to give." 

" I wonder," said Nell, tipping her head to 
one side as she critically examined a newly 
bronzed cone, '• I wonder how it would be to give 
one present where you could n't possibly expect 
a thing in return." 



This was agreed upon, and they finally started 
off, after making Nell promise faithfully to find out 
if Belle had anything for them. 

"And if she has, find out what," Madge called 
back. 

"I '11 do my best," Nell promised, while she 
thought, "Oh, dear, there is something wrong 
about all this, and I don't know just what it is, 
nor whom to blame." 




SOMETIMES 1 THINK CHRISTMAS IS A NUISANCE, SAID NELLIE 



"Very, very disappointing, I assure you," said 
Madge with a laugh. 

" Yes, as it appears to us now," said Nellie ; " but 
I really wonder how it would make one feel." 

" But it is so embarrassing to be thanked by a 
poor but worthy person ; you could n't help getting 
thanks, you know, Nellie dear," said Floy. 

"Yes, I could, too; I needn't let the person 
know who gave the present,',' said Nell soberly, 
adding with a smile, " I also wonder if I ever can 
get this gilt out from under my nail." 

The girls laughed, and as they rose to go, Nell 
remarked that she thought it would be only fair 
that they should come again to her house the 
next afternoon to make their sachet bags, for the 
sake of alternating odors. 



With this unhappy little feeling, she walked to 
the window, where she stood tapping idly on the 
glass and looking after her friends as they went 
down the street. When they had disappeared, 
she found herself watching a small boy zigzagging 
up the street, making a sudden glow among the 
snow-flakes in the halo of each lamp as it was lit. 
Now he was scrambling up the post right in front 
of the house; she noticed how spider-like he was; 
the first match broke off. but he struck another in a 
jiffy, wriggled down again, and was away to the 
next post. Just then, Nell's brother Alf burst into 
the room, with: 

" I say, Nell, have you seen my mittens any- 
where ? " 

" No, Alf, I have n't. I 'm sorry to say ; but very 



144 



A CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY. 



[December, 



likely they are hung up on the floor, somewhere. 
Prowl around awhile and you '11 find them." 

" But, 1 'm in a tearing hurry ; I 'm going coast- 
ing — and I must have 'em — it 's nipping cold ! " 
And he banged around, looking in all sorts of 
impossible places, and getting more impatient 
every minute. 

"Wait a moment, Alf dear," Nell advised, 
" don't get in such a heat, or you '11 melt the ice. 
If the gloves are n't in the coal-scuttle nor in the 
lamp-chimney, as you seem to suspect, it is just 
possible that, by some blunder, they are where 
they belong, on the hall table. Yes, actually, 
here they are ! " 

"Thanks, awfully," said Alf. 

"One moment more, Alf, please," said Nell, 
" do you know the boy who lights the lamps on 
this street? " 

" Know him ? No; not if I know myself ; that 
is, not on purpose. Bye-bye, tra-la ! " and with 
his good heart, bad manners, and worse language, 
out he went, with a final bang. 

Nellie Hildreth was not particularly good, nor 
particularly bad ; she enjoyed her bright life with- 
out bothering about others, and was only more or 
less selfish, as most young people are apt to be, 
chiefly because she had not viewed life from any- 
body else's stand-point, which is the mainspring 
of generosity. But, already several disagreeable 
things had occurred to her, making her feel, for 
the first time in her life, a vague suspicion that 
there might possibly be higher motives of action 
than personal enjoyment or passing fancy. 

These disturbing and unwelcome thoughts thrust 
themselves on her attention in quite an imperti- 
nent way, and seemed to intimate that, though 
unasked, they had come to stay. So they reas- 
serted themselves as she sat all the evening at 
her work, and she repeated to herself that there 
was something inconsistent with the real spirit of 
Christmas in the way she and her friends were 
giving gifts. Several little imps of remembrance 
seemed to jeer at her from the corners of her mind. 
One reminded her of how she had found, at a 
counter of bargains in books, a volume which she 
had long been wishing to give to Amy Kent, and 
which she had joyfully purchased for sixty-eight 
cents; and how, when two days later she had dis- 
covered Amy mousing over thatvery collection, she 
had instantly decided to give the book to Lena Den- 
nison (who cared nothing for the author), because 
Amy must have discovered the price of the book ! 

No sooner had this leering sprite disappeared 
than another recalled to her mind the fact that 
she was spending twice as much on Lillie Phelps 
as on any other one friend. And because she 
loved her twice as well? No, quite the contrary; 



only because Lillie was rich and never gave any 
but handsome things, and as there was an old family 
friendship between the Phelpses and the Hildreths, 
one of these expensive articles always came to Nel- 
lie. And, because of this, she must always strain 
her purse and scrimp those she loved in order to 
make some suitable return ! 

" Suitable return " was so good a bit of closing 
sarcasm that Nellie thought she would end her 
self-arraignment for the night. 

" Only two days to work in before Christmas !" 
was Nellie's first nervous thought as she awoke in 
the cold darkness of early morning. But was it 
morning, Nellie w-ondered ; it was either half-past 
five or twenty minutes after six, she could n't tell 
which. Well, she must know. So up she jumped, 
shivering in the chill air, to peer at the clock, and 
just as she had discovered it to be after six, the 
bright square of light on the wall was suddenly- 
blotted out. Stepping to the window, she was in 
time to see a small, thin figure scrambling up the 
lamp-post just beyond, and out went that light. 




" Oh, I 've caught you at it at last ! I 've always 
wondered when they were turned off," thought 
Nell, hurrying into her warm bed again for an- 
other hour of sleep. "How cold it must be! 
Think of getting up at five o'clock on such a 
morning as this ! I hope he is warmly dressed. 



A CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY 



145 



Why ! he must be the same boy who lighted 
them ! " And now, nestling into the thick blank- 
ets, she remembered that his hands were bare, his 
clothes scanty. Yet her brother, with his big coat 
buttoned about his well-fed body, must have warm 
mittens also. Why ! was it possible that there 
were suffering people passing her very house? 
She had thought that her mother performed the 
necessary charities for the entire family. The 
servant-girl and the washerwoman were well looked 
after; but then, this cold little boy, earning a 
small sum on dark, freezing morn- 
ings, when other people were fast 
asleep in warm beds, did n't seem 
to be anybody's servant-girl or 
washerwoman. " Ah," Nell ex- 
claimed to herself, when her 
thoughts had gone thus far, ''now 
I \e found the unsuspecting object 
of my bounty ! " And she snug- 
gled into the pillow to concoct rapid 
plans, until the rising-bell rang be- 
fore she knew how the time had 
passed. 

Alf was, it must be admitted, a 
torment; but there was nothing 
he would not undertake for his sis- 
ter, provided he were first allowed 
a season of teasing, which pre- 
liminary he considered his right. 
Hence it was that Nell felt sure 
of help when she determined to 
gain Alf 's alliance in her design, 
which was to be kept a secret from 
all but her mother. 

After breakfast, she cornered her 
brother in the pantry, where he was 
providing against possible starva- 
tion while on a skating expedition. 

" Oh, Alf ! " she began, " I 've another secret ! " 

" Don't tell it to me ! I 'm ready to burst now," 
he said, warningly but thickly, as he had, with 
great decision of character, concluded to eat at 
once all the broken pieces he brought up out of 
the cookie jar. " Not another secret for me ! " he 
added. " Did n't I go and tell Mother last night 
that I forgot to stop at King's for her new gold 
thimble that you left to be marked: and " 

"Oh, Alfred Hildreth ! you did n't tell Mother 
that ! " Nellie groaned in distress. 

"Well, hold on, Miss Highty-Tighty ! I just 
asked you if I did ; personally, I thought I didn't j 
but then, it 's just as you say." 

'•'You dreadful boy, how you frightened me! 
But do be careful." 

" I would n't like to tell a secret, but I certainly 
shall, if you give me another. Do I look like a 

VOL. XIV. — IO. (To he concluded.) 



man who would willingly betray a confidence ? But 
there is a point where 1 should go off like a pop- 
gun ; so beware." 

Nellie laughed, but insisted on reposing just one 
more secret in his adamantine breast. 

" Fire away, then ! " he said, at last, trying to see 
if his coat would button over the bulging pockets. 

'•Now, Alf, don't tell a living soul, except 
Mother. She must know. I want you to find out 
who the boy is that lights the gas on this street." 



Whew i " whistled Alf. "Why, you asked yes- 




NOT ANOTHER SECRET FOR !\1E! SAID ALF. 



terday if I had the honor of the gentleman's 
acquaintance ! Is he handsome ?" 

"Fiddlesticks! Don't be foolish, but just find 
out about him, — where he lives, whether he has a 
mother, — and please, Alf dear, see what kind of 
clothes he has; there 's a good boy, and I '11 tell 
you later why I want to know." 

" All right ! I '11 send around my card, and 
ask for his name and the address of his tailor," 
he chuckled, as he took up his skate-bag. 

"Oh, I'll tell you the name of his tailor.'" 
Nellie answered, with a mysterious laugh, fol- 
lowing her brother to the hall; "but don't dare 
darken this door again until you find out what I 
want to know." 

"Oh, well, I wont forget to remember ;" and 
with a merry click of his skates, Alf whistled him- 
self out. 



146 



A NEST IX A POCKET. 



[December, 




NEST IX A POCKET. 



H7 




148 



A NEST IN A POCKET. 



[December, 




1 886.J 



FOR MIDDLE-AGED LITTLE FOLK. 



149 




C°RUTPR? 



By Meta G. Adams. 



Paul liked so much to visit Uncle Jack, because 
Uncle Jack was very fond of little Paul, and be- 
cause the house where Uncle Jack lived had 
magic buttons. Not fine, smooth buttons on his 
coat, nor little, sparkling buttons on his shirt- 
front ! No; buttons far more wonderful than those. 

When Paul's stout little legs had carried him up 
the stoop, he could 
just manage to 
reach on tip-toe a 
little round white 
button on the side 
of the door that 
looked like half of 
a very shiny white 
marble. When 
the little finger-tip 
touched the shiny 
button, it pushed 
in and made a 
sound like a run- 
away clock. Im- 
mediately, the 
wide front door 
swung open, and 
Paul scampered 
in as fast as he 
could go, over the 
marble floor, to 
reach another 
door-way with an- 
other shiny ring- 
ing-button. Then 
that door also 
glided back, and 
Paul and his mam- 
ma entered a beau- 
tiful little bit of a 
room with a velvet- 
covered seat at one 
side of it. Then 

the whole room — with Mamma and Paul and a 
young man in a sort of uniform — went gliding 
swiftly up through the air. It was very delightful, 
but very strange, for "the elevated man" stood 



quite still while they went up, as if he had nothing 
to do with their moving. Whether the fairies pulled 
above or the elves pushed from below, Paul could 
not guess, but he felt very sure it was all the work 
of the magic button. 

When they had risen so high that Paul expected to 
step out on the moon, " the elevated man" touched 




"THE HOUSE WHERE UNCLE JACK LIVED HAD MAGIC BUTTONS.' 



a steel rope in one corner; the little room stopped 
with a jerk, and stepping out, Paul and his mamma 
found themselves in front of Uncle Jack's door, 
which was guarded by another delightful button. 



15° 



FOR MIDDLE-AGED LITTLE FOLK. 



[December, 



It buzzed such a loud answer to his eager touch 
that Paul was sure it was glad he came. 

Paul knew, too, that when Uncle Jack's door 
should open, he would reach a still more astonish- 
ing button. And the next moment he slipped in, 
and, sliding his hand hurriedly up the wall by the 
inside of the door, found the little white button, 
and shouted in a strong voice, as much like Uncle 
Jack's as possible, " Light ! " 

Instantly, over his head and across the hall by 
the parlor door, and away down at the end by 
the library, the beautiful lights flashed out like the 
bright sunshine he had left in the street. Could 
anything be more magical than that ? By this time 
dear, jolly Uncle Jack knew who his visitor was, 
and was ready to show Paul all his magic buttons. 
Paul could tell any one who asked him about the 



buttons, that they were worked by 'lectricity, but he 
did not know just how the wonderful work was done. 

There was the button that lighted all the gas 
in a second without any matches ; the button that 
called the cook from the kitchen ; the little button 
that summoned the doctor if Uncle Jack was sick 
in the night : and the button that would bring the 
engines and firemen in five minutes if fire broke 
out. And there was even a tiny gold button on 
the rim of Uncle Jack's watch that would tell him 
the exact time any moment in the darkness. 

It told Paul's mamma it was time to go home, 
but dear Aunt Sue insisted on pressing another 
little button in the wall, and in a few minutes a 
dainty dish of ice cream was set before the de- 
lighted boy. And Paul thought that button the 
finest of all. 





tj&mMJL 




Will be spun in the January number of St. Nicholas 



FOR MIDDLE-AGED LITTLE FOLK. 



151 



SIR PEN'S LITTLE ARMY. 




152 



JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT. 



[December, 



JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT. 




I AM a new Jack, come to take the place of your 
own dear Jack-in-the-Pulpit for this time only. 
He has gone to talk with Santa Claus, and I am 
to read you his lessons and messages as well as 
I can. 

First, I am to give Brother Jack's love to all you 
St. Nicholas boys and girls, and then I am to 
wish you a delightful December and a very merry 



Christmas. All ordinary days, your Jack wishes 
me to say, come to us out of the gray dawn, ready 
to be whatever we choose to make them — sour 
days, sweet days, rough days, gentle days, busy 
days, lazy days, good days or bad days, as the case 
may be ; but Christmas comes to us ready-made, 
and with a spirit of its own — the holiest, brightest 
day of all the year. 



JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT. 



15: 



Another point I am requested to mention : All 
summer long. your Jack says, the birds have been 
sending songs into the spruces, cedars, firs, and 
other Christmas trees, and the sunlight has been 
gliding in and out among their branches, and soft 
breezes have been nudging and whispering to 
them, until at last there is n't an evergreen tree 
that is n't ready and anxious to do you good serv- 
ice if called upon ; and every tree of them intends 
to keep itself green and trim for the occasion. 

Also and thirdly, I have been requested to ad- 
dress a few words to you, my own self. But, really, 
I don't know what to say. I am so very young. 
It 's hard to be a Jack-in-the-Pulpit, unless you 
grow up to be one, as your own Jack did. So all 
I can say, as I look about me, is, I 'm glad to see 
you all here to-day — and is n't it nice to be alive? 
To be alive is the first thing. After that it is easy 
to be thankful, and after that, not so very hard to 
try to be good. Now, my chicks, as Jack says, 
look into this matter. 

As we 've been talking about trees, we may as 
well begin by reading these verses, sent you by 
your friend, Emilie Poulsson : 

THE PINE-TREE'S SECRET. 

Said the Maple to the Pine, 
" Don't you want a dress like mine, 

Turning into gorgeous colors in September ? " 

"Well," replied the little Pine, 
'• I will own it 's very fine 

While it lasts you ; — but how is it in December ? 

" I 'm contented to be seen 

In this handsome dress of green ; 

And to change it I don't see sufficient reason. 

" But, dear Maple," said the Pine, 
" Don't you want a dress like mine, 

That will last and look as well in any season?" 

" No, I thank you, little Pine," 
Said the Maple ; " I decline, 

Since for autumn reds and yellows I 've a 
passion. 

" Those green dresses look so strange 
When the Oaks and Beeches change. 

Why, I could n't bear to be so out of fashion ! " 

All right, Miss Maple; but if you knew what we 
know, you 'd see why the pine has the best of it 
for not being in the fashion with you trees. Ever- 
greens are in the height of the fashion with us boys 
and girls about this time of year. 

But, my beloved hearers, I guess we 're trying 
to know too much. For Deacon Green says that 
the maple-tree has a secret, too, and that a few- 
months later she may be the belle of the season. 
Now, what does that mean ? And he says, too, that 
the more sappy we are, the better we '11 be able to 
guess. Now, what does that mean ? I wish the Dea- 
con would n't say quite such things as that, when 
there 's nobody but me here to explain 'em to you. 

The next branch of our subject, my hearers, is 
called 



THE WEATHER COCK'S COMPLAINT. 

and I should n't be surprised if the Deacon meant 
that it 's better to be like the maple-tree than to be 
like this old weather-cock. Yet, the weather-cock 
does seem to have a hard time, and you can't help 
feeling rather sorry for the old fellow. Your friend 
Hugh Gibson sent you these verses about him, and 
your Jack asked me to be sure to show them to you. 

No wonder he creaks as the winds go by, 

No wonder he turns with a rusty sigh ; 

How would you like a living earning 

By turning — turning — turning — turning? 

Or to stand all your life with a pole for a base 

And the winds of all weathers to blow in your face ? 

" Creak, creak, creak," we hear him say, 

" To-morrow will be like yesterday, — 

Now to the east, now to the west — 

One never has any quiet or rest, 

An hour of sunshine, another of rain. 

It 's nothing but turning and turning again." 

"Creak, creak, creak," the tin bird cries, 

" In just a few signs the secret lies ; 

When the wind 's from the west, there 's nothing to 

fear; 
When the wind 's from the east, a storm is near. 
Can't every one tell when the day is clear 
Without keeping me turning and twisting here?" 

"Creak, creak, creak," the weather-cock growls, 

" I think I 'm the most ill-used of fowls ; 

I never foretold bad weather yet 

But you went in while I got wet. 

Say what you may, I don't think it 's right 

To keep me twisting from morning to night." 

QUEER NAMES FOR THINGS. 

You all know, of course, that rivers have 
" mouths " and " heads," and you all have heard 
of the " eye " of a needle, the " teeth " of a saw, 
and the " nose" of a watering-pot. But the Little 
Schoolma'am says that these are only the begin- 
ning of the list. She says a great many articles 
of furniture have "feet" and "legs," and some 
engines have " knees." Earthen jars have " ears " 
and " shoulders" ; jugs and bottles have " necks " 
and "throats"; rain-spouts and stove-pipes have 
"elbows"; and grain-reapers have "fingers." 
Every boat has "ribs," and parks have been called 
the "lungs" of cities; — who can tell why? 
Peaches are said to have "cheeks," and every 
two-horse vehicle has a " tongue." 

The Little Schoolma'am says that you can add to 
this list for yourselves, and that, if you think it 
out, and inquire of your elders, you will be aston- 
ished to find how many things in this world have 
the same names as parts of our active young bodies. 
And maybe, too, you '11 find out why this is so. 



Good-eye, my hearers. Your own dear old Jack 
\'ill be in his pulpit again next month. 



154 



THE LETTER-BOX. 



[December, 



EDITORIAL NOTE. 



The December and January numbers of St. Nicholas may each 
be regarded as a Christmas issue ; or, since the one precedes Christ- 
mas Day but a few weeks, and the other follows it immediately, they 
may be taken as together forming a double Christmas number. Mr. 
Frank R. Stockton's story of "A Fortunate Opening," and Mrs. 
Rose Lattimore Alling's account of " A Christmas Conspiracy," 



will therefore run through both numbers ; and the January issue will 
contain several other Christmas features, including a short holiday 
story by Mrs. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, and a Christmas poem by 
Miss Edith Thomas. And as stated on page 150, the " tough little 
yarn " of " The Galley Cat" — a very amusing tale in verse — will 
also be ' ' spun " in that number. 



THE LETTER-BOX. 



Alaska. 

Dear St. Nicholas : My brother takes you, and my mamma 
reads the stories to me because I can not read yet. 1 am five years old, 
but Mamma says I may learn to read when 1 am seven. I wish I 
were seven now. But I know how to row a boat and to steer one, 
too, only not alone, but when Papa or Mamma is with me. My 
brother is twelve years old, and he can climb to the top of the mast, 
or go in a boat by himself. We live on a ship, and my papa is the 
captain. Sometimes the ship goes back and forth, sounding, to see 
how many fathoms deep the water is. My brother and I often take 
a long piece of string and play sound, too, when we are out in the 
straits. We tie one end of the string to his windmill, then a big nail 
to the other, and let the nail end go overboard. When it strikes the 
bottom, we pull it up to see what kind of bottom it is, sticky or sandy. 
Then we take angles like the officers. We have no little children to 
play with, because we sail away from the land, and besides, only 
Indian children live here in Alaska — except in Wrangell. 

My mamma writes my letters for me, and I tell her what to say. 

We went one day on a little steamboat named "Lively," to see 
the Patterson Glacier. It is a big mountain of ice, and great pieces 
break offand float about on the water. We picked up a very large 
piece and brought it back to the shipand put some of it in the water- 
coolers. But the " Lively " was so slow we could nut get up to the 
foot of the glacier. Instead of "Lively," the boat had better be 
named " Slowly," I should think, and we had to come back before 
we wanted to. 

I caught a big halibut one day. The quartermaster pulled it up 
for me, because it was so large it would have pulled me overboard if 
1 had tried to pull it in alone. It weighed sixty-seven pounds. 

Did you ever see hundreds and hundreds of big salmon jumping 
up out of the water ? I see them almost every day, and yesterday 
we saw one that tried to leap up a big waterfall thirty feet high ; but 
it fell back into the water again. 

There were wild deer tracks all along the beach, and one day, in 
Steamer Bay, we saw a big black bear eating wild cabbage-leaves 
on the beach. Mamma and I did not stay on shore alone much 
after that. 

It rains most of the time in Alaska, and we do not have many 
pleasant days at all. Wc are going back to San Francisco soon. 
Your little friend, Mabel E. Snow. 

Charleston, S. C. 
Dear St. Nicholas: I am a little boy eleven years old living 
in Charleston, S. C. , and I thought your young readers would like 
to know how some of us fared on the night of the earthquake. I 
went to bed that night at nine o'clock, and knew nothing of it until 
Mamma and my elder sister took my little brother and myself by the 
hand and led us to the head of the steps, and then Mamma sent us 
down with sister while she ran to the fourth story to get my old 
aunt and youngest sister. All the time the house was rocking so 
we could hardly keep our feet. Mamma and sister were thrown 
down twice before they got to our room. W'hen we got down 
stairs we found the front door was so jammed that we could not open 
it; so we ran through the back door into the street, where the houses 
could not reach us if they had fallen any more. Our neighbors and 
servants soon came there, too. Papa and one of my sisters were on the 
way home from an evening call. They were in the street when the 
shock came. He says he first heard a rumbling noise and saw a 
light cloud coming rapidly to him, and then the earth began to roll 
around under his feet so that he had to cling to the fence to keep 
from being thrown down. If they had gone ten yards further they 
would have been crushed under a wall twenty feet high, As soon 
as Papa got my sister where we were, he took a lantern and went to 
a poor woman who was caught under the piazza which had fallen 



from a neighbor's house. After working nearly a half hour, they got 
her out. Papa said she behaved like a soldier. 

Of course we were very much scared, but after Mamma said a 
prayer for us, we felt God would take care of us. None of us made 
any fuss, not even the colored servants, who were as quiet as possi- 
ble and did everything Mamma told them. As soon as the first 
shock was over, we saw a house on fire a short distance from us and 
another large fire a few squares off, and we thought the whole city 
would be burnt down ; but the engines were soon at work, although 
they had much trouble to get out of their houses. 

Nearly every house took fire from lamps that were upset, but the 
people, even women and children, stopped to put them out before 
they left the houses. We staid in the street until two o'clock, and 
then we went into the basement of our house and lay down on 
mattresses, but only the little children slept. 

Please thank the good people who are sending us money, for we 
are very poor now, and it is very good of them to send it. 

W. Parker Holmes. 

I write so badly, I got Mamma to copy this tor me. 



Dear St. Nicholas : A month or two ago there appeared in a 
number of your magazine an article entitled, "Keeping the Cream 
of One's Reading." The process described there seemed so labori- 
ous that I thought I would describe my own method of doing the 
same thing. I think a book should be v;ilued for the use we can 
make of it, and so I do not hesitate to mark mine. When I notice a 
paragraph or a sentence that seems to me noteworthy, I draw a 
pencil-line around it. In this way, when I glance at the book a 
second time, I know the best portions at once. If there is anything 
very important, I make a note on the margin to call attention to the 
fact. This is no trouble whatever: it can be done at any time or 
place ; and now when paper-covered editions are flooding the land 
with the best publications, it seems to me that since they are within 
the reach of all, there is no necessity, as there might have been once, 
for the other toilsome method. Subscriber. 

DtLLTH, Minnesota. 

Dear St. Nicholas: We have taken your magazine from the 
first (at least, my father has). I was not very old when he got the 
first numbers. We have them all bound ; and they make a very fine 
set of books. 

In the July number for 1883, I read an article on " Hnw to Build a 
Catamaran," by W. L. Alden. I showed it to my friend David Eric- 
son. He said it was very good, but thought I was not old enough 
then to build one, and my folks thought so, too; but I thought 
different. Well, my father made me wait till this last winter, when 
he got some tools and let me go at it. 

In looking back in my journal for 1S86. I find that I began to con- 
struct it on New Year's day, that I finished it on the 1st of May, got 
it ready for sea at the close of June, and have sailed in it all summer; 
so you can imagine what a fine vacation I have had. 

In comparing my sketch with that of Mr. Alden's, you will find 
they differ somewhat; but you see I live at the head of Lake Supe- 
rior, so I had to make her more " ready for sea." 

This is the first boat I ever built, and I have discovered two things: 
the first is, that it is anything but an easy job ; and the second, that if 
you "keep at it," and are very " exact in figuring," you will always 
come out all right. 

Mr. Alden savs : "There is no better boat to cruise in than such 
a catamaran. At night you anchor her, unship your mast, pitch your 
tent, and sleep safely and comfortable. If you come to a dam, you 
take the craft apart, and carry her around it piecemeal. If you once 



THE LETTER-BOX. 



155 



try to build a catamaran, and succeed, — as you certainly will, if you 
have patience, — you will have the safest and most comfortable sail- 
boat in the world." 

I have tried it myself, and find it is true. 

Fred. W. Johnson. 

Twin Lakes, Colorado. 

Dear St. Nicholas : I am a little girl nine years old, and in 
summer we live in a cottage away up in the clouds, two miles above 
the sea-shore. There are mountains all around us, and a lake in 
front of us, and one behind us. There are woods on one side of each 
lake. High up on the mountains, where the trees stop growing, is 
called the timber-line ; and above tnat there are little patches of snow 
all summer long. Now the trees are yellow and red, and the shad- 
ows in the lake are very beautiful. Two deer were killed in the lake 
last week, when they came down to drink. 

Dick and I love to get the new St. Nicholas every month. Dick 
likes the " Brownies ' the most. 

Your devoted reader, Ethel V. W. 



Delhi, N. Y. 
Dear St. Nicholas : We are so fond of you, that, this summer, 
when we made two books out of the leaves of an old day-book that 
were not written upon, we named them in honor of you, New St. 
Nicholas ; and we are writing the best stories we can in them. 

We think that ' ' Little Lord Faun tleroy ' ' is the best story we ever 
read, and are also very much interested in " The Kelp-Gatherers." 
We remain, your interested readers, 

Annie S. and Florence W. 



Near Peking, China. 

Dear St. Nicholas: I am thirteen years old, and I have taken 
you five years. I have three younger sisters, and we all like you 
very much. I like " Little Lord Fauntleroy" 

Last summer we went to Mongolia for a few days, and we lived in 
tents; we slept on the ground, and when we got up in the morning 
it was as cold as if it were winter-time. Large herds of cows and 
oxen would be infected with curiosity, and crowd around the tents, 
when, suddenly, one of us would run at them with an open umbrella, 
and scare them away. There were, at that time, innumerable flowers 
on the hills, and in a marsh near us we found a beautiful little pearly- 
white flower. 

There are some caves two or three miles north of Kalgan that were 
made by men ; for, when we took some dirt off the bottom of the 
larger caves, we found a lime floor underneath In one of the caves 
is a spring, which is a great convenience to us when we go up to 
picnic there. Papa found a stone ax on a mountain west of our 
house, by a mound like those he used to find in Ohio, when he was 
a boy. The ax is no.v at New York at the Metropolitan Art 
Museum. 

Every year we go down to Peking in mule-litters, and we girls 
tlunk it is great fun. The Chinese here say that a man's hair is round, 
and that a woman's hair is fiat. I have tried rolling them between 
my fingers, and have found them so. Is it true? I hope my letter 
is not too long, for it would give me great pleasure to see it in the 
Letter-Box. From your friend, 

Emily Williams 

P. S. — Mamma says T ought to tell you where 1 live. I live be- 
tween China proper and Mongolia, north of Peking. E. W. 



St. Petersburg, 1886. 

Dear St. Nicholas: We have taken you for four or five years. 
We have lived here for more than a year. A few months ago I saw 
a letter from St. Petersburg, but that is about the only one I can 
remember having seen. The little girl who wrote it described the 
droskies. 1 will describe the sledges. The horse wears the same 
harness all the year round. The sledges are very short, being only 
long enough for a moderately comfortable seat for the passenger and 
a very small seat for the izvoshchik (driver). The place where lie 
puts his feet is so small that he has to put one outside. The sledges 
are very low compared with English and American sleighs, and so 
short that the driver almost sits in the passenger's lap. 

Now I must conclude my letter, for it will be too long for you to 
print, and I want you to print it very much, as it is the first letter I 
have ever written to any magazine. 

From your constant reader, Willie Ropes. 



Chestnut Hill, 18S6. 
Dear St. Nicholas: I suppose you know what a poor opinion 
many boys have of what girls can do in the way of outdoor sports. 
Well, last summer, we girls got up a cricket club and practiced 
every day, and at last we made arrangements to plav the boys, and 
although we were beaten, we had the consolation of having the boys 
acknowledge that we could do something in the way of outdoor sports 
Eleanor Cuvler Patterson. 



Dear St. Nicholas: I am an American boy and I spent the 
summer in Switzerland. We staid some time at a little villa on the Lake 
of Lucerne, It is very beautiful there, the mountains are so grand. 
Southwest of us was the Pilatus, six thousand four hundred feet in 
height, which was very close to us. I have two sisters and one 
brother; I am the eldest of the family ; I am twelve years old. 

One of my cousins, who plays very well, went to Bayreuth with 
Papa, to hear the great performances of " Tristan and Isolde," and 
" Parsifal," which are played only every three years, and for which 
people come across the ocean. 

I have taken you four years now and like you very much. Now, 
good-bye, dear St. Nicholas, and believe me to be your affectionate 
little friend and reader, J. H. T. 



Dear St. Nicholas : I have taken you nearly a year. I like the 
" Brownies " best, and I think George Washington was just fine. My 
papa and I made a kite and flag like the one described in the July 
number. The flag hung over Main street and created quite a sen- 
sation on the morning of July 5th. Please print my letter, as it is 
my first. I am nine years old. I live in Elk Point. Dakota. 

Walter H. H. 



B6le, Canton de Neuchatel, Switzerland. 

Dear St. Nicholas : As you were so kind as to print the letter 
I wrote you from Pappenheim, Bavaria, last summer, it has given 
me courage to tell the readers of St. Nicholas a little about Suchard's 
great chocolate manufactory, near Neuchatel, which we have just 
visited. We were first shown the large water-wheel which works 
all the machinery. From there we were taken to the room where 
the raw cocoa beans are kept in great pyramids from eight to ten 
feet high ! We passed through several rooms where the beans 
were broken and shelled by machinery, while in another room they 
were sorted by a lot of women sitting at a long table. The cocoa 
was then passed through several grindings, cookings, and flavorings, 
after which it was molded into its final shapes. It was very inter- 
esting to watch the women wrap the chocolate ; their fingers seemed 
to go like lightning, they went so fast; and it was wonderful to see 
the big cakes of chocolate piled up in room after room, as high as 
the ceiling. Each cake was about two feet long, one foot wide, and 
four inches thick, and it looked so good ! The young man who showed 
us around made it very funny at the end by not only giving us as much 
chocolate as we could eat ourselves, but by stuffing his own pockets 
too. The manufactory is like a little village in itself, there are so 
many great buildings ; some of them are connected by bridges on 
which are laid railroad tracks. These serve to run the cars on that 
carry the chocolate from one building to another, 

I wish all your readers could be traveling, and seeing as much as I 
am, because I am having lots and lots of fun. 

I remain, your loving reader, Harry Lyndon Despard. 



San Rafael, Marion Co., California. 
My Dear St. Nicholas : I am a little girl nine years old, and I 
live in California. The other day my sisters and I were playing in 
a big bay tree, when I saw a little gray thing running about on the 
roots of a tree near by. I climbed down quickly, and ran over to 
where it was, and there I saw it was little baby wood-rat. I picked 
it up in my hands and called " Oh, guess what I 've got," and the 
other children screamed and shouted, and got down from the tree as 
fast as they could, to see what I had. Than we ran up to the house 
with it, and showed it to Mamma, and begged her to let us keep it 




-<&8K 



for a pet. She said she thought it was a pretty little thing, but she 
did not like to have a wood-rat in the house, but she let us keep it 
for one night, and gave us a little wooden box to put it in. We put 
some cotton in the box for a bed, and gave him some pieces of apple 
to eat, and he nibbled a little bit, but he could not eat very much, he 
had such tiny teeth. Mamma told me to make a little sketch of him 
as he sat in the box ; so I did, and here it is ; I tried to make it just 
life-size. I can not draw very well vet, but I send it to you because 
I thought the little children in the East might like to see what a 



156 



THE AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION, 



[December, 



wood-rat looks like, if it is good enough to be printed. The next 
day 1 brought it down to the place where I found it, and wc left the 
box there, too, so if he did not find his mother he could creep into 
the cotton and get warm. When we went back afterward to look 
for it, the rat had gone, so we hoped he had found his mother, and 
we were glad we let him go. Your little friend, 

Ellen G. Emmet. 

Ned M. — Yes ; the name is a real one, and the gentleman lives 
in New York City. 

Eagle Grove, Iowa. 

Dear St. Nicholas: I have taken you for three years, and I like 
you ever so much. I live a quarter of a mile fiom the town, and as 
I have no little sisters or brothers to play with, you are a great deal 
of company for me. I think that " Little Lord Fauntleroy " was a 
very nice story, and I liked " His One Fault " ever so much, and 
was sorry when it ended. 

The prairies here in the summer are beautiful. They are covered 
with flowers; there are goldcn-md, phlox, violets, buttercups, anemo- 
nes, pasque-flowers, red lilies, lady-slippers, asters, indigo-plant, and 
many others. Among the birds are bobolinks, robins, humming- 
birds, sparrows, kitldeers, bee-birds, meadow-larks, and martins. 

I have a horse that is twenty-four years old, a bird and a dog. 
Hoping that I may see this in print, I remain. 

Your interested reader, Daisy Clare B . 

Augusta, Ga. 

Dear St. Nicholas: We have been taking you a very long 
time, long before I could read you ; but Mamma read you to my 
sister and myself. We can hardly wait for you to come out every 
month 

I want to tell you about my darling little pony. He is a Shetland 
pony. Papa bought him for me at the New Orleans Exposition. 
He is very small, his name is Peek-a-boo. Peek-a-boo is very gentle 
now; but when I first got him, he had a way of going fast, and all 
at once stopping, and I kept on going — over his head, and landed on 
the ground. He likes figs very much, and he will eat nearly ail 
kinds of fruit. My sister has an Indian pony; it is very pretty, but 
not so pretty as Pcek-a-boo. Every afternoon we go riding, and 
sometimes we also go in the morning. Peek-a-boo is fond of music; 
sometimes 1 go out where he is eating grass and play the banjo to 
him ; he comes up to me and smells my hand and rubs his nose 
against me, evidently quite pleased. He is so spoiled and petted 
that he is more like a big dog than a horse. He would even go into 



the kitchen if cook would let him. I hope you will print my letter, 
as this is ihe first I have ever written to you. 

Your little friend, Marie B . 



We regret that we can only acknowledge the pleasant letters sent 
to us by the following young friends : 

Dot and Lottie, Edna Weil, " Peep-bo," Esther Watson, The 
Theatrical Trio, LilyW., Ettie Coombs, Harold G., "Bob," Edith, 
Ethel Cutts, Mabel Cutts, W. M., Lucy Eastman, Laurence C. F., 
Horace Macknight, A Reader, " Germaiue and Muriel," Grace 
and Carrie L., Lulu, Clara J. Frayne, Eloise McElroy, " Sippie " 
Liddell, F. A. H., Jennie H. Henry, Clarence H. Robison, Nellie 
T. Bendon, Buttercup, Primrose and Pansy M., Mattie I. Brown, 
Florence A. H., Leonora B. Borden, Julie H., Nellie, Eugene Kell, 
L. D. W., Jennie M. Woodruff, Katherine M., Pearl Wheeler, 
Genevra Foster, Flora F. S., John Warren. Sadie Lewis, Annie 
M. Graves, Nellie Spurck, Nellie Montgomery, Nellie F. H., Aimee, 
A. P., Will J. Dever, Clara Whitmore B., Carrie Byrd, Lily and 
Violet B., Cheney Robertson, "Damon and Pythias," Edith W., 
Bessie Snodgrass, Clara Steele, Ransom Brackett, Arthur B. W., 
Ruth I. Henrici, Algernon, Lizzie A. Prioleau, Helen, Fred. J. 
Nicholas, " Mayflower," " Sachem," Rachel, Jennie Snodgrass, 
Sarah Jenkins, Ida Scott, C. B. S-, Jr., Alice Hani, Florence Day, 
Louise A., Bessie C, Nellie M. Ingraham, Eva Campbell, Willie 
Holt, Lena and AIna, Clarence, Minna and Pansy, Sarah Hunter 
Mustin, Heebie Q. W., Lilly W., Tommy D. W., Charity L. W., 
David Tenney, Bertha Lockwood, Nan and Bert, Jessie Walton, 
Maude Cullen, Ellie A. Ncwhall, Susie P. Ncwhall, M. T. M., 
Jerald and Sue, Harry F., Ida H. Doeg, Edith M. Hadley, M. R. 
S., I. W. Ward, Edith P., A. R. Porter, M. F. D. and A. M. S., 
Freddie Adickes, Florence, Lillian and Pearl Sturtevant, Johnnie 
Culkin, Ella, Jack H., Beryl E. Engel, Mabel J., Polly S. and Alice 
M., Margaret B. M., Mabel Gilbert, Edna Howard, Gladys Daven- 
port, Lila Langford, A. E. Jack, Three Little Maids, Florence 
Langton, Dolly Frankenfield, A. A. C, Louie B., May G. M., 
Bessie C, John H. McClellan, Leo P., Elsie Beth Dunn, Mamie 
Biddle, OtisS., Marion Knight, Bessie Haight, Alfred Dawson, F. 
S. K.., and Bessie Lewis. 




S^l&ssli^sso 






SIXTY-EIGHTH REPORT 




Pleasant Words from England. 



A letter announcing the organization of Chapter 975, London. 
closes as follows: "It may interest you to know that four of the 
members {those bearing the name Francillon) belong to an English 
branch of a family which, in Switzerland, has been closely connected 
with the family of Agassiz, whose sister was Mme. Francillon." 



to Observe Snow-Crystals. 



A. E. Warren, Sec. of 742. Jefferson, Ohio, says: "The best 
way to sketch them, according to my experience, is to catch them 
on a piece of cold looking-glass. Then, with an inch lens, their 
forms can be made out more easily than when caught on cloth." 



Mica for the Microscope. 

[The following km t from Mr. C/ias. E. Brown, of our flourish- 
iug Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Chapter, will be of service io our 
younger members. For fine work, mica is too soft io be useful, 
besides possessing undesirable optical properties. It was formerly 
used to some extent, b?(t has been, superseded by glass.] "I use 
thin sheets of mica to cover objects to be mounted. It is nearly as 
flexible as paper, may be readily cut with scissors, and stands wear 
very well. As I have never seen, in any work on the microscope, 
a method so simple and yet so practical, give it, if you approve, to 
the members of the A. A." 

Who Can Tell? 

Mr. Coggeshall Macy, one of our most earnest members in 
New York City, asks : "Do bumble-bees prey upon spiders ? I have 



1 886.] 



THE AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION. 



157 



been watching a certain kind of brown spider. In two instances, a 
bumble-bee flew into the web and struggled for a moment, but as 
soon as the spider attacked it, the bee flew off, carrying the spider, 
1 thought, in its legs." 

The Courses of Study. 

The subject of a course of study in Marine Zoology has unex- 
pectedly resolved itself into an interesting question regarding the 
right of a certain institution to furnish alcohol for the preservation 
of specimens designed for use outside the State. This question will 
soon be decided. Prof. Crosby is preparing the specimens, etc., for 
his second course in Mineralogy, and will soon be ready for work. 

By the way, 1 can not resist giving a short extract from a letter 
from a Georgia boy — to illustrate the want which is supplied by 
these courses : 

" We need a small fund, the interest of which may be used to 
enable those who need help to avail themselves of the lessons. Even 
the very slight expense for specimens and books, which now attends 
our courses of study, is enough to exclude some of those who would 
be most benefited by them. 

"I am very anxious to take up some scientific course of study. 
I am quite poor and can not afford an expensive course. If it is pos- 
sible that I might pay for the course by copying, writing, or in any 
way, I would be very glad to do it." 



School Scientific Societies 



SWITZERLAND. 



Miss Margaret Kendal Grimston, a member of one of our 
London, England, Chapters, having mentioned seeing a group of 
Swiss boys off for a scientific excursion, sends the following in re- 
sponse to a request for particulars : 

" I should say they were from different schools, as they came in 
three detachments, and each detachment had one or two teachers 
Almost all carried botany-boxes and butterfly-nets. They appeared 
very enthusiastic. The boys were of all ages, mostly ranging from 
about twelve to sixteen. I noticed they wore something in their 
hats, but whether a badge of any sort, I do not know. A gentleman 
told me they were going to spend the whole day in the woods. He 
also told me they made many botanizing and scientific excursions 
about that time of the year." 

A Good Excuse. 

Here comes a report, due last month, but delayed for cause, as 
you may see : 

687, Adrian, Mich. (A). The reason of delay is, that I have 
been waiting to find out what success we had at the county fair. 
Our success was complete. We occupied one whole cottage (18x24 
feet). Although it was a huge job to fix the whole building up, we 
did it, and had a very fine exhibit. We had a collection of stuffed 
birds, a collection of Indian relics, and a collection in geology and 
mineralogy. We had to compete against the fine collection of the 
Adrian College. We took first premium on general collection, three 
other first premiums, and two second premiums. In all, they 
amounted to $18.00. We have purchased matting for our rooms, 
and expect to be in shape to receive visitors very soon. 

We have a large aquarium in running order. We do not wish to 
brag, but not long ago one of the most prominent State entomologists 
said that we had one of the finest collections in entomology in the 
State. We received the report of General Assembly, and read it 
with great interest — Edw. J. Scbbins, Sec. 

reports from the eighth century — 701-800. 

705, Philadelphia (V). The right spirit. — Part of the summer 
has been devoted to botany. I have a small cabinet, containing 
thirty-seven minerals, some shells and curiosities, labeled and cata- 
logued, and have become much interested in mineralogy. I am just 
now sustaining the Chapter alone, but am looking forward to being 
joined by some interested persons, and am by no means discour- 
aged. — Edith Earpe. 

711, Glens Falls (A). A model report. — Our Chapter enters 
upon the third year of its existence, sound in organization and 
earnest and enthusiastic in spirit. Sixteen regular meetings have 
been held, at which numerous papers were read, and " talks " given 
upon natural history subjects, selections read, specimens reported 
upon, etc. 

Under the management of a committee, the Chapter room has 
been gradually made pleasanter and more convenient. A "science 
reading-table " has been started, and upon it may be found, by 
Chapter members and their friends, the current numbers of several 
leading scientific periodicals. A quarterly publication, called the 
"Owl" has been issued, specimen and exchange copies of which 
will gladly be sent to other Chapters upon request 

Agassiz's birthday was duly observed by a formal meeting in the 
afternoon, at which time Dr. Lintner, New York State Entomologist, 
and several Glens Falls gentlemen made addresses, after which a 
festival was held. A delightful walk with Dr. Lintner, the next day, 
May 29th, is looked back upon by the Chapter with pleasant thoughts. 
We number, at present, nineteen active and six honorary members. — 
Edwd. R. Wait, Sec. 

719, Philadelphia (A). A good o?ie. — This Chapter, although 



comparatively new, promises to be a good one. The Chapter was 
formed early in June, 18S6, with four members. The membership 
increased to seven in one week. We have no initiation fees, nor any 
fines. Botany was our subject for the summer, and we had two 
essays read at each meeting, each on a different flower. Two of us 
are arranging an herbarium for the Chapter. We intend to study 
geology in the winter and botany in the summer. We have a very 
nice cabinet of rocks, minerals, and marine curiosities; also some 
very handsome fossils. — Herbert L. Evans, Sec. 

728, Binghaviton, N. Y. Perseverance -wi?is. — For us the past 
year has been full of discouragements. At the beginning of the 
year, we had seven active members, and had secured a room in the 
Y. M. C. A. building, free of charge. Thus equipped, we felt 
ready for work in earnest. But one evening our president and 
treasurer both left us, and we found affairs very unsettled. This 
discouraged us so much that two others nearly left. Then it was 
vacation, and we separated for the summer. On our opening this 
fall, we did some hard thinking. At our last meeting, we admitted 
one new member. We have also decided to send to Philadelphia 
for a good microscope. One of our number claims to have dis- 
covered that on butterflies there are differently shaped scales for 
each different color. — Chas. F. Hotchkin, Sec. 

733, Detroit (D). Bravo, Detroit! — Our Chapter was organ- 
ized November 7, 1884, with five active members. We then had 
a very small room, and a cabinet. Most of us had been col- 
lecting minerals before this, and we spent the next two months 
studying, classifying, and arranging our specimens. We then decided 
to take a course in ornithology, and under a teacher we studied all 
that winter and spring, meeting on every Saturday evening, and 
having lectures every alternate meeting, and at the other meeting 
we would have discussions on the previous lecture. In June, 1SS5, 
we adjourned for the summer. Those who went away collected 
specimens, and those of us who staid at home worked in another 
direction, that of widening the circle of people interested in our 
work; and we succeeded so well that when we reorganized in Sep- 
tember, we had on our list of honorary members some of the most 
prominent men in the city, and a suite of large rooms, nicely fur- 
nished and hung with pictures, and about two hundred books in 
our library. In fact, we had a new stimulus, and things looked very 
bright. We had been paying ten cents a month during the summer, 
and with no expenses our fund grew so that we were able to deco- 
rate the room. We also received a present of a beautiful micro- 
scope. We began the winter with a series of debates on the useful- 
ness of certain birds ; and I wish to recommend this to other Chap- 
ters, as it stimulates a spirit of friendly rivalry, and a person will 
read more on a subject to conquer his opponent than he otherwise 
would in a month. Some of our members asked for something a 
little livelier about this time, and so we organized a secret society 
called the E- A- A-, which met once a month after our regular meet- 
ing. This did not interfere with our work, and gave us a little fun 
mixed in with it. It was decided to celebrate Christmas in a becom- 
ing manner, which we did, with a banquet and speeches and a recep- 
tion by the club. In January it was decided to ask some of our 
honorary members to deliver lectures to the club, and a great num- 
ber kindly consented. They were very interesting, although not all 
relating to natural history. This is the list: 

Judge Jennison, cuneiforms ; Rev. R. W. Clark, geology ; Dr. J. 
F. Noyes, eyes, with dissections ; Dr. Chittick, surveying ; D. O. 
Paige, safes and locks; Judge Reilly, the righi of property; Mr. 
Lewis Allen, Pasteur and his work ; Dr. G. P. Andrews, whales and 
whale-fishing; Rev. J. N. Blanchard, books and reading. 

We made excursions to a suburban farm, once a month, to study 
from nature, and enjoyed them very much. We also celebrated 
Agassiz's birthday. This year the arch-enemy to the A. A. — col- 
lege — will force us to part, temporarily, but we hope to come together 
in college next year, so please don't scratch us off; for as long as two 
members are in one city, the honor of 733, now the oldest and most 
widely known Chapter in Detroit, will be upheld, and we all look 
back upon the last two years as containing some of the happiest 
Saturday evenings of our lives. — Edw. H. Smith. 

741, Meadville, Pa. Good! — We have just come home from a 
camping and collecting expedition. We have been gone most of 
the summer. We had a very pleasant and profitable time, collecting 
several thousand insects for our cabinet. Our Chapter is in a very 
flourishing condition, having now fifteen members active, two hon- 
orary, and three corresponding. We have quite a library, and a 
very fine collection of insects, minerals, birds' eggs, and flowers. 
We hold a meeting every other week, when an essay is read and 
discussed. — Ward M. Sackett, Sec. 

7 '43, Detroit (F). A good plan. — Our membership is seventeen. 
We have adopted the following plan of study for 18S6-7: 

I. Zoology. — a., Mammals; b, Birds; c. Reptiles; d, Fish; e, 
Insects; f, Worms ; g, Mollusks ; h, Echinoderms. II. Botany. — 
a. Palm-trees; b. Garden and Fruit trees; c, Shrubbery; d, Herbs; 
e, Grasses. III. Minerals.— a, Earth and Stone; b, Salts; c, 
Metals: d, Combustible Minerals. — Rate Rand, Sec. 

747, Lexington, Illinois. Concise and to the point — Our Chapter, 
though small, is progressing finely, and deriving a great deal of 
profit from its meetings. We have a cabinet, 546 specimens, and a 
library of 104 magazines and books. We are especially interested 
in Mineralogy, and would be pleased to hear from Chapters interested 
in the same. — W. B. Merrill, Sec. 



153 



THE AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION. 



[December, 



753, Springfield, Mass. " They arc workers /" — We can muster 
only four active members, but they are workers. During the past 
year, we have collected nearly two hundred different geological 
specimens, some of which are rare. On the west side of our room, 
above the entrance door, is a mounted deer's head from the North- 
west. Above this i.s a picture surrounded by Spanish moss, and 
below is a bow and arrow from the South Sea Islands. At the right 
hangs a mirror, below which is a gun and powder-horn used in the 
Revolution, and on the floor is a knapsack used in the Civil War. 
Next to this is a cabinet of miscellaneous specimens, and on top a 
shelf of books. At the right of this is a shelf of iron and quartz 
specimens.- On the east side is a large frame containing Confederate 
bonds and notes, and below is a shelf of marine specimens. Next 
to this comes a buffalo-horn, from which is suspended a small cabinet 
of minerals. On the north side is a shelf containing Professor 
Crosby's mineral collection, and in the middle of the north side is 
an alcove in which is the secretary's desk and six shelves of minerals. 
On the west side is a table of miscellaneous curiosities, and next to 
this is a closet used for storing duplicates. Between the closet and 
the entrance is a small black-walnut cabinet of coins, etc. — Harry 
Wright. 

760, Jamaica Plain, Mass. "It is not without success." — This 
Chapter was formed in December, 1S84. The founder was out of 
school, on account of sickness, and read the reports of the A. A. in 
back numbers of the St. Nicholas. He interested three others 
in the subject, and we held our first meeting, December 22, 1884. 
In April, 1885, a small house was lent to us by a lady. On the evening 
of December 21, 1885, we held a meeting in celebration of our first 
anniversary. Many of our friends were present. On New- Year's 
Eve we had a club supper. 

On May 28, 1886, we held a meeting in commemoration of Agas- 
siz, to which about thirty of our friends came. 

A pleasing and instructive feature of our club work has been our 
field-meetings. We have visited all the suburbs of Boston, and went 
to Fitchburg with a party from the Institute of Technology. The 
president and myself went to Mt. Desert, Me., this summer, and 
got many minerals and rocks. 

We meet on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month. The 
Chapter is divided into two parts : one for the study of Botany, the 
other of Mineralogy. They meet on the first and third Thursdays 
and Fridays of each month. Some members are conducting courses 
of lectures on different subjects. We do our best and hope that it is 
not without success. — C. S. Greene, Sec. 

766, Allegheny, Pa. (A) is at work bright and early. We all feel 
happy to get back into harness, after vacation. 

We held our first meeting for the year last night, and J am sure 
if you could have seen the bright, eager faces in our club-room, you 
would have felt fully repaid for your noble efforts for the A. A. 

For the winterwe have laid out a great plan of wurk, which, if car- 
ried through, will be of more benefit to us than all our previous 
three years' study. 

One of our most able workers is Prof. John T. Daniels. He is 
our guide, and when we are in any difficulty, upon application to 
him all the kinks are sure to he. straightened out. His interest in 
" his boys," as he calls us, is only bounded by our affection for him, 
and should I write this report without making special mention of his 
noble and self-sacrificing endeavors, I should feel as if I were doing 
him an injustice. 

The plan of work we have laid out for the coming year consists 
of essays, original compositions, and lectures by the members. We 
had a great deal of discussion as to whether it were best to take up 
but two studies and have all the members study them, or let each 
one study what suited him best, and at last decided (and 1 think 
wisely) on the latter. We are almost all specialists, and I think will 
all progress well in our own particular lines. 

1 11 the past year we hnve worked hard, and have profited by our 
work. In the year to come we intend to work harder than ever, and, 
if possible, profit more. The only thing we have to regret is that 
in this city our society is not as well known as it should be. For 
the purpose of spreading our name more, we intend to begin the 
editing of a department in a psper that is circulated among the 
school children here. 

If 1 do not close soon, my long report will wean,' you ; so with 
an earnest invitation to other Chapters to correspond with us, I re- 
main, yours sincerely, Fred L. Long, Sec, 14 Sixth street, Pitts- 
burgh, Pa. 

770, N. J". (T). Very gratifying: — I am now in the country, and 
have met two other members of the A. A. We have been collecting 
crinnid-stems. We find it verv difficult to get them out whole. We 
have been taking Prof. Crosby's course, and found it very interest- 
ing. We have eight members and are succeeding very well. — Fred- 
erick W Douglas. 

776, Oakland, Cat. — The Chapter has derived much benefit from 
correspondence with other Chapters. We prepare, for each meeting, 
a paper called "Agassiz Notes," containing a report of the various 



meetings of the Chapter. Occasionally, we hold outdoor meetings, 
which always prove interesting and profitable. — S. R. Wood, Sec. 

787, Elizabeth, N. J. (A). We have collected a great deal and 
are still collecting. We have a collection of all the rocks and the few 
minerals that are found around here, besides many that are not. At 
one time there were twenty-nine robins' nests, with eggs in, just around 
the house. Blackbirds are also plentiful here, building sometimes 
three nests in the same tree, at different heights, but generally about 
five feet apart, and yet seldom fighting. — Roy Hopping. 

780, Kioto, Japan. Do they sing in 'winter? — Will some of cur 
English members tell us whether the skylark sings in the winter in 
Fngland or not? 

Two of us happened to go through the city park the day after 
Christmas, some ten or fifteen minutes apart, and both heard and 
saw a lark. The one I heard went through a variety of changes, 
but did not continue singing so long as the bird usually does in the 
mating season. 

Mrs. Piatt has a poem in one of the October, 1885, numbers of the 
Independent on " Meeting a Skylark in Autumn," but she does n't 
seem to have heard it sing; indeed, the burden of her song seems 
to be that the lark she met was silent, or at most gave only the chirp 
the bird usually gives when flushed. 

The larks here stopped singing in July, for the most part, but an 
occasional song was heard in the fall. — C. M. Cady. 

794, Ftemiugton, N. J. Ask him to resign — We have made very 
little progress during the past two months, what with opposition by 
people who think it a waste of time, and a member who is objected 
to by the parents of others, on the ground that he swears and smokes 
a great deal, which, I am sorry to say, is true. 

We thought of dissolving and then reorganizing, without including 
him. What would you advise us to do, under the circumstances? 

I have a pair of flying squirrels which, I find, can not change their 
course of flight. If any obstruction is held before them immediately 
after their start, they sail into it, unless they drop before reaching 
it— H. E. Deals, Sec. 

Excellent and gratifying reports are received also from Chapters 
706, 708, 710, 714, 716, 718, 725, 727, 737, 739, 742, 746, 749, 756, 
761, 762, 764, 769-770, 77S, 783, 784, and 788 — but as our limits 
forbid the publication of all the reports, we have printed only those 
which have conformed to our rules regarding length, etc., and those 
which have been sent in punctually at the appointed time. Secre- 
taries of Chapters 1-100 will kindly forward their reports at any time 
before January 6th, — the earlier the better. Do not exceed two pages 
of commercial note-paper. 

Exchanges. 

Dvctiophvtons, a very rare fossil, and fossil shells, for minerals. — 
Percy C. Meserve, Bath, Steuben Co., N. Y. 

Calcite. crinoid stems, fossil shells, and fossil coral, for minerals or 
fossils. All specimens are good. — C. E. Eoardman, Marshalltown, 
Iowa, Box 18S8. 

Fine classified specimens of Coleoptera and Lepidoptera, for same. 
Also Hymenoptera (undetermined!, for Lepidoptera and Coleoptera. 
Correspondence solicited. — Ward M. Sackett, Sec. Chapter 741, 
Meadville, Pa. 

Pupa of Angulifera, Imperialis, lo, Lima, etc., and of foreign 
moths and butterflies, for those of Rcgalis, Maia, and other rare in- 
sects. Correspondence requested with some one who rears F.egalis.~— 
James L. Mitchell, Jr., Box 58, Bloomington, Ind. 

Large specimens of minerals and insects, for same. Indian relics 
also desired. — Ezra R. Larned, 50 Twenty-fourth street, Chicago, 
Illinois. 

Chapters, New and Reorganized. 

No. Name. No. of Members. Address. 

410 Shelbyville, Illinois. . (A) 4. .Benjamin A. Cottlow, Box 635. 

229 Chicago, Illinois (F) has joined Ch. 15^, Chicago (E). 

6 Mt. Washington, Md. (A) 6. Miss A. V. Crenshaw, Box 56. 
242 Philadelphia, Pa. (I).... 4. Ph. P. Calvert, 

Room 7, 520 Walnut Street. 

Dissolved. 



955 Ridgefield, Conn. . 
751 Plymouth, N. H.. 



5. Roger C. Adams. 
. ...W. P. Ladd. 



All are invited to join the Association. 

Address all communications for this department to 



Mr. Harlan H. Ballard, 

Piltsfield, Mass. 



THE RIDDLE- BOX. 



159 



THE RIDDLE-BOX. 



ANSWERS TO PUZZLES IN THE NOVEMBER NUMBER. 



Rhomboids. T. Across: i. Taper. 2. Saber. 3. Tenor. 4. 
Never. 5. Wedge. II. Across: r. Clasp. 2. Ocean. 3. Tried. 

4. Ensue. 5. Stems. Charade. Base-ball. 

Anagrams, i. Oliver Cromwell. 3. James Garfield. 3. Na- 
poleon Bonaparte. 4. Benjamin Franklin. 5. William Pitt. 6. 
Thomas Jefferson. 7. Abraham Lincoln. 8. Christopher Columbus. 
Geographical Acrostic. Minnesota. Cross-words: 1. Man- 
chester. 2. Indiana. 3. Nevada. 4. Nicaragua. 5. Euphrates. 
6. Singapore. 7. Ohio. 8. Texas. 9. Amazon. 

Pi. Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crowned, 
Where all the ruddy family around 
Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail, 
Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale. 

Goldsmith. Traveler, line 17. 
Word-building. i. As-cent. 2. As-kant. 3. As-lope. 4. As- 
sail. 5. As-sent. 6. As-sign. 7. As-sets. 8. As-size. 9. As- 
sort. 10. As-sure. u. As-tern. 12. As-tray. 

Double Diamond. Across: 1. C. 2. Boa. 3. Alack. 4. 
Aniline. 5. President. 6. Catties. 7. Reits. 8. Roy. 0. N. 



Cube. From 1 to 2, frighten ; 2 to 4, nautical; 3 to 4, tropical; 
1 to 3, fragrant ; 5 to 6, gangrene ; 6 to 8, educible ; 7 to 8, strangle; 
5 to 7, glorious; 1 to 5, flag; 2 to 6, nose ; 4 to 8, lobe ; 3 to 7, tars. 

Rebus. There 's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. 

Triple Acrostic First row, Omnibuses; fourth row, steam- 
ship; last row, steel pens. Cross-words: 1. Orestes. 2. Martlet. 
3, Naperie. 4. Imbathe. 5. Brimful. 6. Use soap. 7. Shuhite. 
8. Environ. 9. Surplus. 

Greek Cross. I. 1. Manna. 2. Avail. 3. Named. 4. Niece. 
5. Alder. II. 1. Aroma. 2. Rival. 3. Ovoid. 4. Maize. 5. 
Alder. III. i- Alder. 2. Leave. 3. Dares. 4. Event. 5. 
Rests. IV. j. Rests. 2. Ethel. 3. Shine. 4. Tense. 5. Sleep. 
V. 1. Rests. 2. Exert. 3. Senor. 4. Trope. 5. Strew. 

Word-square. I. x. Lover. 2. Oxide. 3. Vigil. 4. Edile. 
5. Relet. II. 1. Trade. 2. Ripen. 3. Apple. 4. Delhi. 5. 
Eneid. III. 1. Abase. 2. Baden. 3. Admit. 4. Seize. 5. 
Enter. IV. 1. Vases. 2. Adore. 3. Solar. 4. Erase. 5. Sered. 
V. 1. Hovel. 2. Opera. 3. Venus. 4. Erupt. 5. Lasts. VI. 
1. Start. 2. Tiber. 3. Above. 4. Revie. 5. Trees. 



To our Puzzlers : In sending answers to puzzles, sign only your initial* or use a short assumed name ; but if you send a complete 
list of answers, you may sign your full name. Answers should be addressed to St. Nicholas " Riddle-box," care of The Century Co., 
33 East Seventeenth St., New York City. 

Answers to all the Puzzles in the September Number were received, before September ro, from Maud E. Palmer — Paul 
Reese — Maggie T. Turrill — E. C. T. and N. K. T. — John — Grandpa and Sharley — San Anselmo Valley — Francis W. Islip — Nellie 
and Reggie — The Spencers — W. R. M. — Two Cousins — " N. O. Tary " — C. and H. Condit — Edith McDonald. 

Answers to Puzzles in the September Number were received, before September 20, from Tad, 1 — N. L. H., 2 — Westboro Jo, 
11 — M. Sherwood, 7 — Aloha, 4 — Watermelon Days, 1 — Effie K. Talboys, 10 — Tell. 1 — Nornie, 1 — F. Jarman, 1 — E. A. R., 7 — 
Beth, i2 — Primary, 1 — " Waterbury," 11 — J. S. L., 3 — Florence A. F. and Bessie S. P., 12 — Ben Zeene, 3 — " Sallie L. and Johnny 
C," 8 — Jo and I, 9 — R. L., 1 — Jet, 6 — Arthur and Bertie K., 8 — Arthur G. Lewis, if — Agricola, 12 — L. M. B., 10 — Daisy and 

Mabel, 10 — " Original Puzzle Club," 9 — St. Autyus, 10. 



EASY PICTORIAL PUZZLE. 




quent, and leave a relative. 4. Behead singly, and leave retired. 
5. Behead a serf, and leave to wash. 6. Behead a young branch, 
and leave the cry of an owl. 7. Behead an occurrence, and leave 
to utter. 8. Behead to draw along the ground, and leave to scoff. 
The beheaded letters will spell the name of a summer resort. 

" HIGHWOOD." 

PI. 

Uarrhh orff heart niisstarch ! 

Grin lal eth yrmer slelb, 
Nda grinb het deargrinss lal daunor 

Ot rhea eht alte eh sletl. f. a. w. 

WORD-SQUARES. 

I. 1. To tinge. 2. A fruit. 3. A kind of cloth. 4. Public. 
5. Leases. 

II. 1. A heathen. 2. Unextinguished. 3. Scuffs. 4. To turn 
away. 5. Abodes. 

III. 1. Informed. 2. A thin cake. 3. Succeeding. 4. A bird. 
5. Blundered. " phil 0. sopher." 

A BIRD-CAKE. 



Across : r. In whip-poor-will. 2. A brilliantly colored bird, with 
harsh note, common in Europe and America. 3. A wading bird, 
remarkable for its peculiar flight, found in the United States. 4. A 
small, slender hawk, of reddish fawn color, spotted with white and 
black, and common all over the world. 5. A rasorial bird, having 
feathered feet and a short bill, and highly prized for food. 6. A web- 
footed water-fowl, remarkable for its enormous bill, found about the 
Mediterranean. 7. Sea-fowls, commonly called "boobies." S. A 
web-footed marine bird, unable to fly, found only in the South tem- 
perate and frigid regions. 9. A genus of birds, including the sun- 
bird, or honey-sucker. 

The central letters, reading downward, spell the name of a grouse- 
1. Behead what is often on the breakfast-table, and leave a bundle like bird, of a gray color, mottled with brown, found in Europe, Si- 
of paper. 2. Behead a fruit, and leave active. 3. Behead to fre- beria, and North Africa. " l. los regni." 



The above illustration show: 
What are they ? 



an author and nine of his works. 



BEHEADINGS. 



i6o 



THE RIDDLE- BOX. 



[December. 




When the above rebus has been rightly deciphered, a very affect- 
ing little story will be found as the answer. w. s. R- 

STAR PUZZLE. 

i 

o o 

4 u o o o o 5 

o o o o 



From i to 2, loose gravel and pebbles on shores or coasts ; from 1 
to 3, a small plate or boss of shining metal; from 2 to 3, a mark in- 
dicating a question ; from 4 to 5, a freebooter ; from 4 to 6, a plant 
used in dyeing and coloring; from 5 to 6, to turn aside from the 
right path. "myrtle green." 

CROWDED DIAMONDS. 



III. Primals, recompense; finals, aversion. Cross-words: i. 
A plant that grows in wet ground. 2. A volcano. 3. To wither. 
4. To declare. 5. To demolish. 6. Achievement. 

The cross-words in all the foregoing acrostics are of equal length. 
The letters which form the primals and finals may all be found in the 
word wreathed. dvcie. 

PYRAMID. 

Across : 1. In tongs. 2. A step. 3. Stoppers, 4. A low, 
oven-shaped mound. 5. Trading. 6. Trees suitable for timber. 

Downward: i. In tongs. 2. Twice. 3. A kind of meat. 4. 
An ornament in a building. 5. The government of the Turkish 
Empire. 6. To gather ior preservation. 7. Part of a costume. S. 
To agitate. 9. A unit. 10. Two-thirds of an era. 11. In tongs. 

" NAVAJO." 

TRIPLE ACROSTIC. 



I, Across: 1. A meeting held by law-pupils, for the 
trying imaginary cases. 2. Profitable. 3. A glutton. 
Primals, philosophers of the east ; centrals, a clique 



purpose of 
4. Design. 
finals, the 
an optical 



sea-swallow. Primals, centrals, and finals combined, 
instrument and toy. invented by Athanasius Kircher. 

II. Across: 1. Richer. 2. A domestic manager. 3. Tending 
to provoke. 4. Pure. 

Primals, the smallest particle imaginable: centrals, a pavilion; 
finals, small Portuguese coins. Primals, centrals, and finals com- 
bined, trees of a certain kind. f. l. f. 



Left-hand Diamond: i. A numeral. 2. A covering. 3. A 
mark in printing. 4. A Brazilian parrot. 5. A species of hickory, 
and its fruit. 6. To convert into leather. 7. In twine. 

Right-hand Diamond : 1. A numeral. 2. A color. 3. Har- 
monized. 4 A vessel carried by soldiers. 5. Indigent. 6. The 
governor of Algiers. 7. In twine. " rose madder." 

DOUBLE ACROSTICS. 

I. Primals, a keeper; finals, scarcity. Cross-words: i. Un- 
civilized. 2. Part of a wheel. 3. A girl'sname. 4. An agent. 5. 
To issue. 6. Precipitate. 

II, Primals, a filament; finals, a sliding box. Cross-words: 
1. To watch. 2. White with age. 1. A cape on the coast of Por- 
tugal. 4. An old word meaning plenty. 5. Pain. 6. A graceful 
quadruped. 



NUMERICAL EXHJMA. 

I am composed of one hundred letters, and form a four-line stanza 
by W. R. Spencer. 

My 93-26-47-76-17 is a Christmas decoration. My 4o-56-3i-8-?o 
is found in barns. My 66-53-08-86 is celebrity. My 49-12-75-20 
is a loud sound. My 72-6S-3 is sometimes on the breakfast table. 
My 24-S4-61-37-29 is being manufaclured all summer. My 38-14- 
43-SS-1? is what usually follows a chill. My 21-64-58-32-S2 is a 
circular frame, turning on an axle. My 62-45-60-34-7S is an appa- 
rition. My 1-1S-90-70-51-5 is to traffic. My 71-94-2-10-28-22- 
100 is a lattice-work for supporting plants. My 97-36-73-85 is a 
pronoun. My 41-54-91-96-23 is an appointment to meet. My 
6-55-30 is a color. My 4-S1-48 is a snake-like fish. My 92-46-19- 
77 is to summon. My 52-44-11-74-9-39 is a small stone. My 25 
~79 - 33-35~95~ 2 7-67 ' s unfriendly. My 87-65-50-89-7 83-57-16- 
42-69-63-13-99-59 is a greeting to all the readers of St. Nicholas. 



ST. NICHOLAS 



JANVARY 1887. 

[Copyright IB37, by the Century C*J 



NHT3 




cto $race issau) ,no longer wait jtsfl 
CSLitb eyes' boiioncast on emptie plates 
jBut see ^^lurhcy.fftt .supine .•m>o^) 
£Dn mbitb ,£000 -People .^t sball oint ! mm 
UDfyore Iietjj |je.— anobk!)ulK.«««««-j 

CDbatsooncsballbcjfsbatternbbulli 

Carbe ,<£-ooVn«n,catbe,t»itb speco an'?) skill -e^ara 
$e (Suests, spare not .but tit your fill! es€CKv<s3t£D 




lit wbo islbis.tbat tbfefwap eotncsS^ssssfs" 
^)triaaggc-|3ubbrng,txu'tb twcdtl) of plums :hh 
Jf^a! smell ^e not ^-saoone fumes ^smmemmi 
h* ©rlent on this tabic blooms .K^ajtyjaifiia 

£}' Gbropics'l)*™ tbeirJDamitcS spill — ^.-^-^v^^v^. 

B?e (Bruests, Spare not, but eh pour fill ic^rsf^^^sm 





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J 



if* ' ~*$~Z r^~ ,~~ 



( v 












We ferric Christmas Feast, uanvakt 



tib now row Junlicte.3imibIrs;.Ciartrjs,©<>© 
2(no, after tl)f«e, y - minte-weat Pic .«e3^^j 
2fnb monumental Cake ,[}uYb Ijicjl) AOflta 
iDabc by ^- cunning Quccnc of ^carte,cn 
WJil)o a I .surlxysf xuitl) beaming eye . cro*s)tC3 
Qttotl) sbc : "J)rety Ucerit.iaxrit .still :@BE3Ssaai 
3iJt (Ernesto, spare not, but ctc^youp Till ! o>c^<><5ao 





* 



ibsq S?e Sfitxtit Christmas Feast. 




cPcast is^orte. c'-SDay (s^jone , i 

.Hnb ^I«pc ljis curiam* t)arli l)as^rat»n;@ 

©jjtre tljrougl) peepc* many a fearful tj)ing: 

(Dixlccsges got shutting up nruS^owmc ;m&swh 
S)*/£l9mcc-"Pic tocarc* a "bea'bly froxxme ; i^^Mc^^i 
9'CahcjS £trft>3umbl<& leal) a'bance; Basasa 
£J £ Claries anb3unket« mably prance.! 
2$«au*e,Q Quests, ye ate j;«)ur fill. is 
Cljejyc sprites-^ Ijatoe tioxu il>rir ft)il "Will 




uccocaa 



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4r 



f ::■•' 



:k 







166 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN. 



[January, 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN. 
By Ripley Hitchcock. 



There still stands in the little village of Barbi- 
zon, near Paris, a low, peasant's cottage, which 
from 1849 to 1875 was the home of the French 
artist, Jean Francois Millet. 





PORTRAIT OF MILLET, FROM A CRAYON SKETCH 

At the end of the garden was his dark studio. 
Here he painted, day by day, after mornings 
spent in digging, sowing, or reaping. In the late 
afternoons he wandered among the gnarled oaks, 



gray granite bowlders, and heathery hillocks of 
the Fontainebleau forest, sometimes alone, some- 
times with artist friends, but oftener with children, 
who were always his favorite companions. 

Then they returned 
/7~J >"' : T^- " : -5iST to the cottage through 
■ "■ ..;;:".-' beautiful forest glades, 

..':.; ■_. J !-,..-' and after the simple 

•'"-."■: - •• evening meal came 

: the children's hour. 

There sat Father Mil- 
, ... -t let, his soft, dark eyes 

,~Zs---' '-:■". ;' - shining with merri- 

-' ?V: ' . ment, his brave, kind- 

^:i®5. !>' foce all smiles for 

the grandchildren and 
the others who, unre- 
proved, pulled his full 
black beard or climbed 
upon his knees to rum- 
ple his dark hair. 
Sometimes he sang 
jovial old French songs 
praising the life of the 
laborer among the 
vines. When other 
artists, like his friend 
Rousseau, were pres- 
ent, they made rebuses, 
filling out a word by a 
sketch. 

But, best of all, the 

children liked Father 

Millet's pictures ; and 

. so, when the lamp was 

lit and placed beside 

the group, on a table 

\ in the low cottage 

room, Millet drew for 

the children such rude 

sketches as are shown 

';'; on pages 170 and 171. 

If an old newspaper 

and a match were at 

: ■:' hand, Millet asked for 

nothing more. He 

dipped the match in 

an inkstand, made a 

few quick strokes on the margin of the newspaper, 

and there was a peasant or a horse and rider to 

be recognized at once. They were very hasty 

sketches, these little outlines dashed off after din- 



i88 7 .j 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN. 



167 




THE SOWER. 



ner with ink or pencil upon odd scraps of paper, 
and yet they show at least one of the qualities 
which made Millet so great an artist. Every atti- 
tude, movement, and gesture is truthful, although 
expressed by a few rude lines. 

These sketches were drawn easily and freely, 
yet with an exact knowledge of the meaning 
which every line should convey. Sometimes Mil- 
let exaggerated the characteristics of the figures 
that the children might recognize them more 



FAINTING UV MILLET.) 

easily, as, for example, in showing the difference 
between a horse at full gallop and one quietly 
working, as shown on page 171. 

Millet is known in this country chiefly as a 
painter of peasants, although he painted other 
figures, and landscapes, marine views, and fruit 
pieces. And in his paintings of peasants, which 
are sometimes seen in our exhibitions, there are the 
same truth of action, the genuineness, and the sim- 
plicity which show even in these little drawings. 



1 68 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN. 



[January, 



His figures are really doing just what the artist 
intended to represent, for Millet sympathized with 
and understood his subjects. He was a peasant 




mandy peasant-girl returning from market. She 
has sold the vegetables or eggs with which the 
donkey's basket was filled, and she rides with her 
feet in the basket, sitting heav- 
ily on the patient donkey, as 
one can see by the curving 
lines which show the relaxa- 
tion of the figure, for she is 
tired from her day at the 
market. Another sketch shows 
a little peasant girl holding 
a goat as if to show off its 
form and paces to a possible 
purchaser. This is one of 
several scenes of the out- 
door farm-life which Millet 
knew so well. He drew what 
he had often seen — peasant- 
girls feeding a heifer from 
a pail of bran and water, a 
mother and child beside a 
pet cow whose tongue lolls 



himself. Of course, to realize his even, subdued, 
but rich coloring, his knowledge of perspective 
and light and shade, and to understand how much 
his designs embraced, one must see his finished 
paintings, many of which are owned in New York 
and Boston. 

At least one of his paintings is indicated in these 
drawings. That called " The First Step " was 
probably in his mind when he drew this charming 
little sketch, so expressive of the loving anxiety 
of the mother, who stretches out her arms to re- 
ceive the child toddling uncertainly toward her. 
In the painting, the peasant mother brings a 
laughing, crowing babe to the gate, and the father, 
who has set down his barrow, kneels, holding out 
his arms to the child. 

As Millet's drawings took form among the 
laughter and outcries of the group whose heads clus- 
tered around the paper, the scenes of his own child- 
hood must often have come back to him ; for sev- 
eral of his subjects are taken from Normandy rather 
than from the neighborhood of Barbizon. In Barbi- 
zon the villagers are too near Paris to be counted as 
true country folk, and the primitive features of their 
dress have been changed through intercourse with 
the people of the city. But in and about the hamlet 
of Gruchy, in Normandy, where Millet was born in 
1S14, the peasants wear sabots, or wooden shoes, with 
long turned-up points, larger than those worn at 
Barbizon ; and the favorite head-dress of the women 
is the white cap of peculiar form shown in some of 
these sketches. In one, Millet has drawn a Nor- 




SKETCHES MADE BY MILLET FOR HIS GRANDCHILDREN. 

hungrily out, and a woman trying to keep the 
peace between a fiercely barking dog and a cow 
charging with head down. The human figures 



1887. J 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN. 



169 




FEEDING THE CHICKENS. (FROM A PAINTING BY MILLET.) 



I 70 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN. 



[January, 




THE PET COW. 



SKETCH 3V MILLET.) 



have the characteristics of Normandy peasants ; 
for the people and scenes of Millet's youth made 
the strongest impression upon his mind. 

All his life he cherished the memory of the good 
grandmother who cared for him during his first 
years, she who came to his bedside in the morning, 
saying, "'Wake up, my little Francois ; you don't 
know how long the birds have already been singing 
the glory of God ! " Sometimes his father, a gen- 



fields, saying of the grass, " See how 
fine ! " or, " Look at that tree, how 
large and beautiful ! It is as beautiful 
as a flower ! " One could imagine that 
this was Millet himself, walking in 
the Fontainebleau forest with a child. 
There was a great-uncle, a good 
priest, dearly loved by Millet, who 
taught the children to read or cheer- 
fully labored in the fields. And 
all around Gruchy were pastures 
and plowed fields where the peasants 
drove their cows and sheep, or sowed 
and reaped. Beyond the village 
were cliffs, and the seashore where 
ships were sometimes driven ashore, 
and where the villagers gathered 
seaweed after storms. Such were 
Millet's surroundings when a child, 
and they must have been fresh in 
his mind when at Barbizon he 
drew these figures of Gruchy peas- 
ants. 
The sketch on page 171, which shows a goat and 
two horses, one gallopin g and the other quietly work- 
ing, has been drawn over something else. Millet 
had first drawn a pair of rabbits, probably with other 
figures, and as no fresh scrap of paper was within 
reach, he used this again. Then one of the grand- 
children tried his hand at drawing a whip, and it is 
easy to fancy Millet, with smiling face, leaning over 
the little one, encouraging his attempt. Again, 




*=^> 



BETWEEN TWO FIRES. (A SKETCH DV MILLET. I 



tie, pure-minded peasant who loved music and the 
beautiful things in nature, would try to model a lit- 
tle figure in clay for his son, as Millet often did, in 
after years at Barbizon, for his child-friends. Or 
the father would take the boy Millet out into the 



Millet drew a stately-stepping horse and important 
rider with blaring trumpet, the sound of which 
announces the coming of a circus. When he drew 
the cats, one spitting angrily at a dog, the other 
running away, Millet's own cats may have been 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN. 



171 




lying at his feet. They were not the only pets at 
the Barbizon cottage. Often the children brought 
young crows from the forest, and these became 



incorrigible thieves, so that it was one of the chil- 
dren's duties to find their hiding-places and bring 
back stolen articles. 

After sketching all these figures and objects, 
Millet would take a subject near at hand, and 
would make a drawing of one of the children pres- 
ent in the room, or of his daughter holding a baby 
in her lap or putting it to bed in its small cradle. 

The grandchildren were not ten years old 
when Millet drew these sketches, not old enough 
to go with him on long walks in the forest, or to 
spend hours in Paris picture-galleries. There, his 
companions were older children. One of them first 
knew Millet in the city of Cherbourg, a few miles 
from the artist's birthplace, the city where he 
received his first lessons in art. 

This boy had heard from his father how the 



SKETCHES MADE BY MILLET FOR HIS GRANDCHILDREN. 



young peasant Millet tried to imitate the engrav- 
ings in his Bible during the noonday rest, how 
he drew the figures about him, and covered the 
fences with sketches, until his father took him to 
Cherbourg "to see whether he could make a living 
by this business." When the artist to whom they 
went saw Millet's drawings, he said to the father: 

" You must be joking. That young man there 
did not make these drawings all alone." 

And when convinced that they were really the 
boy's work, he exclaimed : 

" Ah, you have done wrong to keep him so long 
without instruction, for your child has in him the 
making of a great artist." 

Presently the Municipal Council of Cherbourg 
awarded Millet a meager pension that he might 



172 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN. 



[January, 



study art in Paris. But the councilmen expected him ; but from an old miniature likeness he 

the artist, in return, to send back large paintings painted a beautiful portrait, the face seen in a 

to the city museum, although he could not live three-quarters front view. Wishing models for the 

upon the pension. They became angry at his hands, Millet found a man in the neighborhood 




S .>- JJl ir— ^ '' H ~'% TV -I- 



THE REAPER. (AFTER THE ORIGINAL BY MILLET.) 



delay ; and he, finally, bought an immense canvas, 
and in three days painted a picture of Moses 
breaking the tables of stone. He varnished it 
at once and sent it to the museum. But as the 
picture was varnished before the paint had dried, 
it soon began to crack. Now the picture looks so 
old that some of the good people take it for a 
painting by Michael Angelo. Then the council- 
men asked Millet to paint a portrait of the mayor, 
who had recently died. Millet had never seen 



who had finely shaped hands. This man, as it 
happened, had been imprisoned for some offense. 
When the portrait was finished and shown to the 
councilmen, they sent for Millet and told him that 
they were greatly displeased. The likeness was 
good, they said, but there were two grave faults : 
The artist had painted only a three-quarters view 
of the late mayor, whereas his Honor invariably 
entered the Council Chamber facing straight for- 
ward; and secondlv, it was shameful to have used 



i88 7 .] 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN. 



l 73 



the hand of a man who had been in prison as way to pass the dry-goods store where this sign 
the model for the hand of a man so good as the late hung, and among its admirers was the boy who 
mayor. Poor Millet! There was nothing for him afterward, when his father removed to Paris, be- 
to say to people so simple and ignorant as these. came one of Millet's young friends. 




THE CHURNER. (COPY OF AN ETCHING BY MILLET.) 

One of his Cherbourg pictures, however, was In this boy's Paris home there were in all 

appreciated, and that was a large canvas sign bear- twelve children. When Millet entered the large 

ing the figure of a little girl, which his poverty had dining-room every one rushed to meet him, and 

forced him to paint. there he often sat until late at night, talking, 

Some of the children often went out of their laughing, and singing for the children, drawing 



174 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN. 



[January, 




MORNING. (AFTER A DRAWIM 



sketches, or modeling in wax figures of birds and 
animals. 

"He looked like a good bourgeois" (small 
tradesman), says one of these children, "but he 
was tall, well formed, with a strong, very kindly 
face, beautiful soft eyes, and big black beard." 

Often Millet took the boy of whom I have 
spoken to see the paintings at the Salon or the 
Louvre. If a landscape satisfied him, he tried to 
make his young companion understand why it was 
beautiful ; for example, how one could feel that 
there was air in the scene, how there was such a 
sense of atmosphere that it seemed as if one could 
go around behind the trees. 

He cared little for simple fullness and richness 
of color. " A man can see what he pleases," 
Millet often said, "but there must be atmosphere 
and texture in a picture. A stone must be harder 
than a tree trunk, and a tree trunk harder than 
water." Once he was looking at a painting of a 
scene in Algeria. 

" See, there is no atmosphere," he said. " It 's 
very cleverly done. There is everything in it 
except true art." 

"But you have not seen that country," a 
bystander exclaimed. "It is like that." 

" In any country," replied Millet, " you must be 
able to breathe ! " Then, turning to his young 



EPPEL & ^u.) 



friend, he added, "Whether the air is hot or 
cold, you must feel that there is distance between 
the figures and the sky above. The water may be 
of any color, but it must be liquid, and you must 
feel that if you slap it, it will move." 

In another talk, as they walked through a pict- 
ure gallery, Millet spoke of difficulties in art, 
saying that one thing was as difficult as another. 
" To paint a glass placed upon a table so that you 
feel that one can be taken away from the other is 
just as difficult as anything else," he asserted. 
•'If a painter fails here, he will in other things, 
because he has not received an impression strong 
enough to put on canvas." 

The yearly exhibition of pictures known as the 
Salon usually gave Millet little satisfaction. " The 
whole is done by the same hand." he would say, 
"'except where here and there a master makes a 
hole in the wall." 

But at the Louvre, which contains the works of 
old masters, Millet found so much to delight him 
that the little feet beside him were often wearied 
from standing on the hard floor. He was so sen- 
sitive to the beautiful, so ready in explaining it, 
that his young companion learned to love the an- 
tique sculpture, for which Millet had a real passion, 
and for other of his favorite groups. One of these 
was Michael Angelo's " Captives." 



<88 7 .) 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN 



175 



This is the way that Millet explained to his friend 
the force of a master's work. He would lead him 
before the painting of "The Deluge," by Nicolas 
Poussin, whom he esteemed one of the greatest 
of painters. " See," he would say, " you can feel 
that the frightful rain has been pouring down for 
a long time, and that it will continue. You can 
feel that man, beast, and nature are fatigued, 
overcome by the pitiless, unceasing destruction of 
all things. Everything is still, before unending, 
terrible calamity." Then, to show the difference 
between true, great art and mere talent, Millet 
would take the boy to the painting of " The Del- 
uge," by Girodet, and say, "Here is a rock, the 
only thing above the water. It is all very dra- 
matic. It is an event, something short, like a 
thunder-clap or a flash of lightning. Those peo- 
ple on the rock are holding to the branch of a tree 
which is breaking. They will disappear, and there 
will be nothing left in your mind. This is a mo- 
mentary scene, soon to be finished. It leaves 
nothing to think about. But Poussin's 'Deluge,' 



red, sailor's jacket, weather-beaten straw hat, and 
wooden shoes, was like a boy himself. One could 
not go far with him in an afternoon. He found a 
picture at every step. At every turn of the path 
he stopped, pointing to the sunlight on the trees, 
or to the mosses on the rocks, exclaiming, " Look ! 
See how beautiful! " Or he threw himself down 
upon the ground, saying, " How delicious it is to lie 
upon the grass and look at the sky ! " Perhaps it 
was at such a time that the idea came to him for a 
series of charming little panel pictures which he 
painted, representing the blades of grass like tall 
trees in a forest, and the little inhabitants of the 
grass, busy ants and greasy snails, magnified in 
the same way — a glimpse of a strange, new world. 
When Rousseau joined Millet in the forest, the 
children were sharply watched. Rousseau loved 
the forest as if it were his dearest friend. He was 
angry if a branch were broken or a vine torn down ; 
indeed, the children were hardly allowed to touch a 
leaf or a blade of grass. Often, when coming home 
in the twilight, Millet was attracted by the fire of 




in its quiet way, leaves so much gloom and distress the blacksmith's forge at the end of the village 
in your mind that you are bound to remember it street ; and he paused with his friends, exclaim- 
all your life." ing at the play of light upon the figures near 
But some of the happiest hours spent together the forge and at the flickering shadows beyond. 
by Millet and the children were in the beautiful One evening he came upon an old country cart 
forest of Fontainebleau. Millet, wearing an old, with a loose wheel which made a noise, " poum, 



176 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN. 



[January, 



poum," as the cart rolled on. He stopped and 
listened, and presently said that he should like to 
paint a picture which would make those who saw 
it feel that sound coming through the twilight. 
It seems a contradiction to speak of a sound in a 
picture, but in Millet's greatest painting, "The 
Angelus," we see a slender spire outlined against 
the sunset light, two reverent figures in the fore- 
ground, and we feel at once that at the sound of 
the distant church bell the peasants have bowed 
their heads in evening prayer. 



One of his pictures, representing an old wood- 
cutter followed by Death, was refused at the Salon, 
because it was supposed that he meant to show 
the hardships and sufferings of the peasant class. 

But there was no political purpose in Millet's 
paintings. He always looked upon peasants as 
the happiest people in the world, since they 
were "doing God's work," and living out-of- 
doors among beautiful scenery ; and he tried to 
represent them so. But, of course, with their 
digging and plowing and other heavy work, 




THE NEW-BORN LAMB. (AFTER A PAINTING BY MILLET., 



Children were always welcomed in Millet's 
cottage, but there were other less agreeable visit- 
ors. The grand people of the court, who some- 
times came to the studio after hunting parties at 
Fontainebleau, were coldly received, for they did 
not understand the artist. They thought that in 
his pictures of peasants hard at work in the fields 
he was trying to show how miserable the common 
people were under the Empire of Napoleon III. 



" they can not be the figures of Watteau," Millet 
used to say. Watteau, who was a fashionable 
French painter in the last century, represented 
country people like figures in a masquerade. They 
are very pretty and very finely dressed, those dainty 
Watteau shepherds and shepherdesses (some of 
my readers may have seen them copied upon fans), 
but they are very different from real peasants in 
their working clothes toiling in the fields. Talk of 



i83 7 .] 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN. 



177 




Vol. XIV.— 12. 



1 7 8 



MILLET AND THE CHILDREN. 



[Janxary, 



the misery and hardships of peasants made Millet 
indignant. "What I call hardship," he said, "is 
work like that of the stevedore, imprisoned in a 
dark, foul hold, stowing away coal — not the peas- 
ant's free work in the open air." 

Since the court people misunderstood him so 
entirely, Millet avoided seeing them when he 
could ; but once he was caught. One day an 
open carriage drove to the door, bringing four 
court ladies who wished to see the studio. As it 
happened, Millet himself, in his sabots and blouse, 
answered the bell. 

" Is M. Millet in?" asked a visitor. 

Millet stepped outside and then said, "No." 



and, on leaving, put a gold piece into Millet's hand, 
taking him for a servant. Afterward, when he 
was publicly honored with the rank of Cheva- 
lier of the Legion of Honor, one of these ladies 
recognized him. Millet simply said: 

' ' Years ago your gold piece would have been a 
God-send to me." 

For there "was much trouble in his life. Peo- 
ple were slow to recognize his greatness as an 
artist. He knew what it was to want food and 
fire, and to be persecuted for money which he 
could not obtain. All this is described in his 
biography, written by Alfred Sensier, one of his 
friends ; but Sensier's book may lead the reader to 




THE ANGEtT'S. 



(AFTER THE PAINTIN' 

inquired one of the 



" Can we see his studio 
ladies. 

" No," said the unrecognized artist ; and he ex- 
plained that M. Millet was a very peculiar man, 
who would be angry if the studio were shown. 
But as the ladies insisted and entered the yard, he 
said that he would admit them if they promised to 
tell no one of their visit. They entered, looked 
everywhere, upset half the things in the studio, 



think that the hard struggle for money and recog- 
nition embittered Millet's life. On the contrary, 
he was not only courageous, but cheerful and 
jovial — "the most charming of companions," says 
one of his friends.* Had he become soured, and 
constantly bemoaned his misfortunes, there could 
not have been such intimate companionship and 
loving friendship between this brave, gentle artist 
and the children. 



To this friend nf Millet, Mr. Gaston L. Feuardent, I am indebted for valuable reminiscences. 



i88 7 .] 



THOSE CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS. 



i/9 



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iV^M -i/-. S;^- > /v. 1 ■■■■■. ' j , ■ . ' J»ff 




1^ a 




of|m^^ 



Bv Rose Hawthorne Lathrop. 



After a long consultation on the part of the 
children, the stockings hung from the nursery man- 
telpiece. It was felt that Waddle and Toto were 
too young to present their case with sufficient skill 
in favor of the nursery mantelpiece ; and every- 
body was certain that the stockings should hang 
in a row. They always had hung so, and they 
looked extremely jolly by bulging at contrasting 
points. So Laure and Weston obeyed their con- 
sciences, and gave up pressing their claims for the 
hall fireplace or either of their own rooms. 

Waddle's stocking looked so small that Weston 
laughed at it ; but Laure put on her superior air, 
and told him it was the prettiest of the four, and that 
he ought to be ashamed of himself. Toto suggested 
that, as he had two legs, he should be allowed 
to hang up two stockings ; he also hinted that his 
shoes could hold something, and he advised the 
other children to give this matter practical con- 
sideration. 

" Do you wish to make Santa Claus angry, 
Toto?" asked Weston, chidingly. 

Toto looked much distressed, and turned around 
slowly to the door, as if he expected Santa Claus 
to be on the threshold ready to punish him. But 
as the doorway was empty, he turned back doubly 
saucy. 

"Santa Claus can't be angry, Weston. If you 
were always good-natured, I think you might have 
a big bag with presents in it to give away." 

Toto's logic seemed to have convinced his brother 
and sister, for at nine o'clock that night four pairs 
of stockings hung from the nursery mantel. The 
children were as quiet as dolls in their beds. But 
downstairs the parlor was very gloomy, although 
three people sat in it. 

"O John!" cried Mrs. Carey, the children's 



mother, "I am becoming perfectly wretched! 
What if the express does n't get here ? " 

" My dear, you have already asked that question 
several times," said her husband. 

" Well, are not you thinking about the presents, 
too ? " she demanded. 

'"Yes; I shall cry in a minute," he gayly an- 
swered. 

Grandmother laughed softly ; but she tried to 
calm her daughter's anxiety. 

" I have heard that the express is very apt to be 
late on Christmas Eve," she said. " And, besides, 
even if the things don'J get here, the day will be 
happy enough, Sophie." 

" There it is, I think ! " exclaimed the children's 
father, who was as excited as his wife over the 
matter, although he had become so accustomed to 
supplying the courage for the household, that he 
was very quiet. " No ; the sleigh went by." 

" I 'm going to look at the stockings," said Mrs. 
Carey. And she ran softly upstairs. When she 
came down again, she was so mournful that Mr. 
Carey said : 

" Sophie, it is really early yet for the express, 
you know." 

" But we bought the things yesterday ! " she 
protested. 

" That makes it very likely that they will come 
here all right to-day, does n't it ? " inquired her 
husband. 

Mrs. Carey now stood at the window, looking 
out into the darkness, through which a fine snow 
drifted, as usual on the eve of Christmas. 

" Cheer up, dear," pleaded her husband over 
the top of the evening paper. 

At the words she clapped her hands and turned 
joyfully toward the room, saying : 



i8o 



THOSE CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS. 



[January, 



Oh, it is all right, at last! How thankful I I 



In fact, Mrs. Carey seemed to dismiss from her 
mind all thought of the presents as soon as she 
saw the sleigh draw up at the gate ; and she now 
sat down by the center-table and took up some 
fancy-work, while Mr. Carey went to the door to 
speak to the expressman. 

There was a little laughter and some stamping. 
Mrs. Carey looked up — and there was Aunt Fitch ! 

Instead of screaming, or groaning with disap- 
pointment, or doing anything else that would have 
expressed an unpleasant shock, Mrs. Carey flew at 
the old lady and kissed her in the merriest man- 
ner, exclaiming twenty different welcomes, as if 
her delight required a very unusual number, and 
then reluctantly handed over Aunt Fitch to Grand- 
mother's embrace. 

" We feel flattered," said Mr. Carey. " It had 
grown so late that we began to fear you had chosen 
Henry's or Laurie's this year." 

"No," replied Aunt Fitch. "I made up my 
mind to come — six months ago. You see, among 
other reasons, I knew Waddle would be so cunning 
by this time, and I wanted to have the fun of see- 
ing her before she grows wiser and bigger." 

A yelp from one of the old lady's parcels an- 
nounced to the Careys that " Picket" had come in 
his accustomed hamper, and Mrs. Carey flew to 
open it and let the welcome skye-terrier out. At 
once the dog bounded into the room. 

" I had chosen a lovely imitation skye-terrier 
for Waddle ! " cried the anxious mother, sud- 
denly remembering all her disappointment about 
the presents. 

•' Why do you speak in that tone ? " asked Aunt 
Fitch. " What has happened ?" 

" The most serious thing that ever was heard of 
on Christmas Eve ! " said Mrs. Carey. " The chil- 
dren's presents have not come ! I always like to 
buy them the last thing, or else they are sure to 
turn up before they are wanted, in out-of-the-way 
corners; then, too, there is a delightful excite- 
ment about Christmasing at the last moment ; 
but now I am punished for my selfish folly in 
delaying, for the express has evidently overlooked 
the packages. What will the children do? " Aunt 
Fitch gave a rather cheerful grunt as Grandmother 
helped her off with her velvet bonnet. " Juct think 
what a sad Christmas Day it will be ! " cried Mrs. 
Carey again, her eyes full of tears. "And the 
empty stockings ! " 

" Perhaps it will be dismal, and perhaps it 
wont," said Aunt Fitch. "As fir me. I have 
brought nothing expensive with me to give 'em ; 
for you know I don't believe in gift-affection. But 
I believe in having a good time, and I '11 do what 



can to help you out, Sophia. And you 'd better 
leave the stockings where they are. The children 
might as well learn something to-morrow. Now 
I '11 go to my room, if you please ; for I 've had a 
long journey. Come, Picket, go to bed! " 

" A great deal depends on you for to-morrow, 
my dear aunt ! " said Mr. Carey, as he bade her 
an affectionate good-night. 

" One would think I was a pilot," she answered 
laughingly. " But, nevertheless, I am going to 
have a sound sleep, and forget about every one of 
you." 

Aunt Fitch disappeared by the staircase, and 
her terrier trotted off with Mr. Carey to the basket 
which was always in readiness in case the little 
dog came to visit them. 

The next morning Toto was the first in the house 
to awake ; and it is a wonder that Waddle did 
not wake at the same moment, for something was 
happening with considerable noise in their nursery. 
Bump, bump, tumble, grumble, squeak, scamper ! 
That was what made Toto sit up in his bed and 
blink, while a dim light filled the windows, and 
the night-taper began to look stupid. Suddenly 
Toto went back under the blanket, for he saw only 
five stockings hanging at the mantel-shelf, and he 
was certain that Santa Claus must be busy filling 
them at that moment. Then somebody jumped 
upon his bed ; he felt four jolly little feet on dif- 
ferent parts of his body, and he slowly uncovered 
his head. 

"Picket!" 

Picket stood as still as a statue, gazing back at 
Toto. A limp and shattered stocking dangled from 
the terrier's mouth, and his ears spread out with 
their fringes of silken hair. Not an eye was to be 
seen in his face, but his bang looked as if it meant 
to speak. 

" You precious pet!" cried Toto, enveloping 
the dog in his arms. But Picket wriggled away 
and was on the floor the next moment, prancing 
about with the stocking and tripping himself up 
with it, so that he rolled over just as if it were 
fighting with him, and getting the upper hand 
too. Toto shouted with laughter, and Waddle 
started up with her pale blue eyes filled with 
sleep and astonishment, unable to see anything; 
but she was soon laughing agreeably in company 
with her brother, and then skillfully sliding into a 
bawl of alarm. 

•• It 's Picket ! " Toto cried. " See, Waddle ! 
He 's torn all the stockings to pieces, now, but 
yours. That hangs up still : and, O Waddle, 
it 's empty ! " 

All this noise had aroused Laure, who soon 
stood on the threshold of the room in her little 
peach-colored wrapper, while the daylight grew 



THOSE CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS. 



181 



stronger every moment, and revealed the strange 
condition of things quite distinctly. 

" Weston ! Weston ! " was all she said ; and her 
mouth would n't shut after that. 

Weston immediately appeared in a crazy-quilt. 
He and his elder sister whispered together, star- 
ing at the empty fireplace, usually heaped with 
presents, and at Waddle's solitary stocking. They 
received Picket's active greetings as though he 
were a ghost. 

"I wonder if this is Christmas Day?" Laure 
half sobbed. 

"Of course it is; but Santa Claus forgot to 
come," Weston replied. 

"Santa Claus had a great deal to do in his 
hurry, or was stuck in a snowdrift, I suppose," 
Laure promptly rejoined. " How dreadfully sorry 
for us Mamma will be ! Toto and Waddle, do you 
hear ? You must try to comfort Mamma for there 
being no presents. The hearth is quite empty ; 
and here is Picket, who has torn up the empty 
stockings ! " And Laure burst into tears, and sat 
down in a heap on the floor. 

Picket ran up to her and gave a great leap at 
her face, and they all laughed, in spite of their 
dismay and disappointment. 

" If Picket is here, Aunt Fitch can't be far 
away," said Weston in a whisper to Laure. " Oh, 
what fun it will be if she has come to spend 
Christmas ! " 

" Perhaps Santa Claus gave her the presents to 
bring," suggested Toto. " I am sure they must 
be friends ; don't you think so, Laure ? " 

Laure had opened her lips to answer, when all 
turned their eyes to the doorsill, upon which stood 
a little bent figure in a dark cloak with a hood 
which hung out so far as quite to hide the face 
of the wearer. A thin hand projected, resting 
upon a cane. The older children thought at once 
of the traditional old woman in the fairy stories, 
who always brought wealth and happiness to the 
people she visited. 

"Pray tell me, if Miss Laure, Master Weston, 
Toto, and Waddle are at home," asked the little 
hooded person, tapping on the sill with her cane. 

"Oh, yes; here we all are, madam," Laure 
answered, coming forward with a bow. 

" I called early on very particular business," 
continued the visitor. " I have been told that you 
are among the children whom Santa Claus did not 
visit last night ; and as it is through no fault of 
your own, I have come to speak with you about it." 

" I want my p'esents ! " roared Waddle, taking 
in the whole situation so suddenly that she was 
frightened, besides being greatly disappointed. 

"Stop, Waddle!" Toto cried; "or I '11 tell 
Mamma ! Listen to what the old witch says." 



" Toto, I 'm surprised at your calling her a 
witch," exclaimed Laure, setting out a chair, and 
motioning with her hand for the old lady to be 
seated, while Weston shut the window and blew 
out the night light. " It is rather cold here, to be- 
sure, but Weston will start the fire, and you can 
keep your cloak on for a while." 

" Stay in bed, Toto," said Weston, as his brother 
skipped up. " You can tell Mamma as much as 
you wish to, by and by ; but you must obey me 
now. Put the blanket around you, and sit down, 
nicely." 

Meantime the little old woman had seated her- 
self in the chair which Laure offered, and Laure 
herself had taken a seat on Waddle's bed, and put 
that cunning bundle on her lap ; and a little hush 
indicated that some remarks were expected from 
the queer-looking stranger, who knew so much 
about interesting matters. 

"You must learn, in the first place," said she, 
wobbling her prominent hood about as she shook 
her head emphatically, — and the fire gave a crackle 
of encouragement as it began fairly to burn, — " that 
your presents will probably arrive here to-morrow 
morning ! " 

Toto whispered, before any one else could do 
anything, " I don't want them to-morrow morn- 
ing !" 

But Laure and Weston clapped their hands, and 
Waddle hammered her feet on Laure's knee like 
two drumsticks, and sung out : 

" Ho, ho, ho ! I want something woolly for my 
p'esent ! " Upon which her sister hugged her until 
Waddle's face was red enough to alarm Picket, 
who stood looking at her with one ear hung up 
like a flying sail; and he 
gave a loud bark. He had 
been sniffing around the 
shoes of the old lady, and 
had thought over the state 
of things very carefully, 
with the result that he 
appeared twice as good- 
natured as before she en- 
tered the room. 

"We 're delighted to 
hear it ! " responded Wes- 
ton, in answer to her news. "To-day will be 
rather solemn, though, and I am afraid we shall 
look glum now and then. I was never without 
Christmas presents on Christmas Day before, in 
all my life." 

" It is quite well, then," returned the little old 
lady, shaking her stick at him as if in play, 
"that you should share for once the discom- 
fort of children who have never any Christmas 
presents from anybody, although they see other 







182 



THOSE CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS. 



[January, 



people enjoying the frolic of the season. Now 
you know what a dreadful empty feeling belongs 
to those who are only lookers-on." 

"You talk as if we ate our presents !" inter- 
rupted Toto, who had a way of being very impo- 
lite with the pleasantest demeanor in the world. 
But the old lady treated his remark with the indif- 
ference it deserved. 

"I should think," threw in Laure, "that chil- 
dren who never had anything given them would 
not feel as badly as we do this morning. They 
can't know how nice it is to have charming 
things." 

"Indeed they do!" said the old lady. "It 
makes my heart ache to think how many children 
are waking up this morning with a longing to have 
some one put a pretty toy into their hands to keep 
for their own — children who have never even 
touched a rubber ball ! " 

Everybody was very silent. 

" I don't like to think of it ! " Laure murmured, 
at last. " We can not help it, although we should 
be glad to ; and so 1 think we would better forget 
all about those poor children." 

" Where are they, anyhow?" asked Toto. 

The old lady flourished her stick at them all. 

" You can't do anything, can't you ? And where 
are they, eh? Toto, they 're in this town, where 
you live, if you choose to look for 'em ; and Laure, 
they 're able to take presents, if you give 'em a 
chance to do so, you little goose ! " 

" Why does n't Santa Claus see to all that?" 
retorted Toto, uncrushed as ever. 

" My, how hot that fire is getting! " replied the 
visitor. 

A noise of water dashing into a tub, and of steps 
approaching, told that Nurse was on the war-path 
for children to wash and dress ; and there was a 
sudden jump and scream at the door when the good 
woman perceived the strange figure sitting in the 
middle of the room. The figure rose, and bobbed 
a courtesy. 

" Don't scream, Nursey," begged Weston. 
" Santa Claus has sent a messenger to say that 
the presents could n't get here until to-morrow, 
and we 've been talking it over. My dear 
witch," he continued, getting up in his crazy- 
quilt, and bowing low, looking like a kind of 
Indian with his uncombed hair and gay apparel; 
" on second thoughts, I am sure it was right for 
you to tell us of the poor children, and perhaps 
we can set about looking after a few of them, 
somehow. Anyhow, you 're a dear old naitnty, 
are n't you ! " And with that Weston scampered 
past the old lady and gave her hood a great smack 
as he went, and laughed himself beyond hearing, 
to get himself dressed. Laure tossed Waddle 



into the gaping nurse's arms, and threw herself so 
enthusiastically on the visitor that the poor soul 
nearly toppled over; and with another kiss ran out 
of the room, leaving the old lady to hobble smartly 
down the hall in the direction of the guest-cham- 
ber, chuckling, with Picket close behind her. 

Mrs. Carey issued from her room, calling " Merry 
Christmas ! " along the hall, though her voice 
quavered at the words. But out popped sundry 
heads along the way she went, calling back in 
various tones, " Merry Christmas, Mamma ! " 
And the tones sounded really jolly, for the chil- 
dren all had the sense of there being fun under 
the roof of the house, in spite of the queer kind of 
celebration they were having. To be sure, Nurse 
had pulled out a present for each from her big 
pocket, and they had gloated over the little re- 
membrances as if they had been set with jewels, 
they were so glad to have something. And then 
Mr. Carey's voice shouted out " Merry Christ- 
mas ! " so loud that Picket was heard to bark 
in reply, and go scurrying downstairs to punish 
the man who dared to make as much turmoil in 
the house as he himself made. 

When the family assembled in the dining-room 
for breakfast, there entered from the parlor an 
extraordinary dame, whose white muslin cap was 
so enormously high in the crown, out of all pro- 
portion with herself, that the children danced and 
shouted with delight. She wore a queer dress of 
red flannel, and a white lace neckerchief, fastened 
with a broad black velvet bow ; and her spectacles 
must have been made out of ancient window-panes, 
they were so big. She had heavy black eyebrows, 
which seemed to curve up with great effort, and 
her cheeks were very pink, and her nose was very 
white, so that even Laure and Weston wondered 
if they knew her. In she came, with a fine smile, 
and bobbed a dozen courtesies, crying out : 

" Good Merry Christmas morning to you all !" 

Then the laughing children caught sight of the 
breakfast-table, whereon a few unaccustomed ob- 
jects attracted their hilarious attention. 

At Laure's plate there was a pile of twelve 
books, covered with different bright colors of cam- 
bric, to protect the binding; and numbered in 
big numerals I., II., III., and so on. A card lying 
upon this gayly tinted array revealed that the 
books were from Aunt Fitch, and were to be read 
through the coming year, one for every month. 
They were splendid books in point of value, which 
Laure had not yet read ; and Aunt Fitch had care- 
fully graded them, in order that her little niece 
would be able to understand every one the better 
for having read the one preceding it. At Weston's 
plate there was a "live rooster who couldn't 
move," as Toto expressed it, with a tail and neck 



THOSE CHRIS T M AS STOCKINGS. 



I8 3 



as glossy and superb in color as any that ever were 
seen. A card hung at the leg of this present, 
which said that under the feathers of its prettily 
curved back was a passage-way for coin, therein 
to be deposited for twelve months ; and under 
this piece of information were the words, "Never 
be late ! " Toto was dumb with rapture over a 
portfolio of prints which had been cut from il- 
lustrated periodicals and weekly newspapers, and 
pasted upon cardboard, ready for painting by 
Toto, who delighted in this branch of art. There 
was no need of giving him a paint-box, for he had 
possessed a good one ever since he could say what 
he wanted. Waddle's present was a big cat, made 
of white and brown worsted that stood up over its 
body as worsted does in a hairpin-ball ; and its eyes 
were two great yellow beads with black painted 
in the middle, very lifelike. Around its neck was 
a bright ribbon ; and it stood up as well as anybody. 
Waddle was never tired of trying to find out how 
deep the fur was, and how the fuzzy tail never 
would pull to pieces. These presents also were 
from Aunt Fitch, and her praises resounded on all 
sides ; while the little lady in red flannel and the 
peaked cap dodged among the members of the 
family, her odd aspect and bright speeches pro- 
ducing bursts of merriment wherever she went. 

But there stood Mrs. Carey at the head of the 
table, just a little pale, in spite of a smile; and 
Weston took notice of her regretful expression, and 
rushed up to her, and flung his arms around her 
neck, in the style of the days when he was four years 
old and not at all in the dignified manner usual 
with him since he felt himself half a man. 

" Mamma, darling, is n't this a jolly Christmas 
morning, eh ? " said he. "And do you know, Santa 
Claus could n't get around last night, and sent the 
queerest little creature, to let us understand that 
he 'd be here soon ; and — " 

"Oh !" broke in Laure, " dear Mamma, if you 
feel distressed about our stockings being empty, I 
assure you we shall scold you roundly, for we are 
perfectly reconciled — and — and besides, Picket 
has eaten them up ! " 

"And if they 'd been full," joined in Weston 
again, " Picket would have pulled them down, all 
the same, and ruined everything; so it 's lucky 
they were empty." 

" No, he would n't ! " cried the small woman in 
red. " Don't you know I sent him up to the nursery 
to amuse you all because they were empty ? Bah ! " 

"And who are you, ma'am?" Toto inquired 
shortly. 

"You mos' too funny!" interjected Waddle, 
who seemed to be playing on her cat's back with 
her lips, as if it were a shepherd's pipes, while 
staring at the stranger. 



" I say," cried Toto ; "I wish you 'd tell me who 
you are ! You don't look like anybody under the 
sun. I guess you had a cloak over you, a little 
while ago ; did n't you ? " 

Toto thought himself cleverer than the rest of 
the household to have hit upon this fact ; for fact 
it was. But Laure and Weston could hardly help 
shouting with fun to see him so mystified as to 
who the stranger really might be. 

" My name is Aunt Holiday," answered she in 
squeaking tones, standing up straight with her 
arms akimbo, and shaking her head from side to 
side rapidly, so that her cap looked twice as big as 
when it was quiet. " Every one has a chance to 
have a good time when I come for a visit." And 
she suddenly stopped shaking her head, looked 
fixedly at Toto, and then nodded at him. Toto 
was still gazing at her in astonishment, when his 
mother cheerily commanded the family to sit down 
to breakfast, her heart having been wholly relieved 
of its weight of disappointment when she found 
that the children were not going to be wretched 
themselves. And Aunt Holiday was placed at 
once at Mr. Carey's right hand. 

" And to what shall I help you, my dear Aunt 
Fitch ? " began Grandmother, rubbing her fingers 
together with morning briskness. " Oh, dear, 
■what have I said 9 " 

The children burst out into screams of delight, 
and pointed at the little woman in the big cap ; 
though Waddle followed suit merely from habit, 
and demanded : 

"Who 's Aunt Fits? " 

" Why, you 're pointing at her ! " shouted Toto. 
" Of course it 's Aunt Fitch, with her funny fan- 
cies ! " 

" Come here and welcome me, then," said the 
outlandish guest, turning to him ; but he sat very 
still in his chair, and grew red in the face. 

" Look different first," he answered, as if she 
could change her appearance instantly whenever 
she chose. 

" Why, Toto ! don't you know your old Aunt 
Fitch ? " cried the voice he had learned to love from 
its merry kindness; and his great-aunt pulled off 
her big spectacles, and laid them by her plate. 
Toto was at her elbow in an instant, kissing off 
her powder and rouge, and making her cap totter 
to the floor, which gave Picket one of his mischiev- 
ous scampers, during which the cap was absurdly 
rumpled ; but Aunt Holiday put it on again, be- 
cause she said she could not tell fairy-stories unless 
she wore it. 

" Oh, yes, I have some rare stories to tell you to- 
day," she added ; "and this is my thinking-cap." 

"Do you know," said Laure, "I wish you 
would tell us about the children who never have 



1 84 



THOSE CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS. 



[January, 



presents, Aunt Holiday, before you give us fairy- 
tales and other laughable stories. I 've thought 
several times of the unhappy children since I met 
you in that cloak of yours at break of day. 1 shall 
never remember them without seeing your black 
cloak. Mamma, do you suppose we can ever do 
anything for the children who are forgotten ? " 
" Every Saturday throughout the coming year," 



wise it would be to adopt it; and then a great 
many children will be made happy. Parish Christ- 
mas-trees go a long way ; but I think we can carry 
our basket where even they have not been heard 
of; and I am sure children like to get into little 
corners by themselves, with their treasures, after 
finding them at their feet, as you might say, and 
without much talking and management." 




"WHEN THE FAMILY ASSEMBLED FOR BREAKFAST THERE ENTERED AN EXTRAORDINARY DAME.' 



interrupted Aunt Holiday, " you all can devote 
a quarter of an hour in the morning to making 
nice gifts, such as they will best like ; and on 
next Christmas Day we can put them in a basket, 
and take them around to the poorest houses in 
town. Nobody will expect us, and they will be 
glad we have come. You can also tell your young 
friends of your plan, and they may see how 



"That is a lovely idea of yours, Aunt Fitch ! " 
cried Mrs. Carey. " I engage myself to help the 
children to carry it out ; and if no one tries to 
enter into the scheme who does not heartily care 
to, I am sure there will be no fussy patronage 
about it ; but the unfortunate little ones will have 
true pleasure, and all in consequence of our chil- 
dren's empty Christmas stockings to-day ! " 



iS8 7 .] 



A MILLENNIUM. 



185 



A MILLENNIUM. 
By E. W. 



If ever I should grow to be 

So big that I could make a doll 

With hair and dress and parasol, 

I 'd make enough to make them free ! 

I think it is a burning shame 
To see so many girls and boys — 



And men and women — with no toys 
But such as few would care to claim. 

If every one could be like mc, 
And have a doll as nice as mine, 
With real eyes and joints and spine, 
Oh, what a happy world 't would be ! 




i86 



FORTUNATE OPENING. 



[January, 



A FORTUNATE OPENING. 

(Concluded.) 

By Frank R. Stockton. 



•' We now had our meals regularly, for my wife 
had gone to work in the kitchen. She declared it 
was the most ' cluttered-up' place she ever saw in 
her life, but she had made wood fires in the curious 
stove, which it took her a long time to understand, 
and we had hot tea and coffee and warm food of 
various kinds. I always sat at table in the cap- 
tain's place, with my wife, representing the most 
honored passenger, at my right hand. 

" After a brief calm a breeze sprang up, and as 
soon as we felt it, as we stood on deck, looking 
out for sails, we ran forward to see what effect it 
had on our foresail. The great canvas was puffed 
out and swelling. It made me proud to look at it. 

"'Now we shall sail before the wind,' I said, 
' if we sail at all. I don't know that one sail will 
be enough to move the ship.' 

" ' But how about the waves coming in at the 
side where it is stove in ? ' asked my wife. 

"'We shall have the wind and waves at the 
stern of the ship,' I said ; ' so that will be all right.' 

" She thought this might be so, and we went to 
the vessel's side and threw over chips, to see if it 
really moved. Before long it was evident that the 
steamer did move a little, for the chips gradually 
began to float backward. When I saw that this 
was truly the case, I gave a cheer. 

"'Hurrah!' I cried, 'she 's off! And now 
let 's hurry up and steer ! ' 

" Up to the pilot-house we rushed, and we both 
took hold of the great wheel. I pulled one side 
up and my wife pressed the other side down, stand- 
ing on the spokes with a full appreciation of the 
importance of her weight. We put the rudder 
around a little to the starboard, I think it was; and 
then we watched the clouds, the only points of 
comparison we had, to see if it steered any. We 
were pretty sure it did. If the clouds did not 
move so as to deceive us, our bow had certainly 
turned a little to the right, and I also found that 
there was a difference in the swelling of the sail. 
We then brought the rudder back as before and 
the sail filled out again beautifully. Then we knew 
that we could steer. 

"The success pleased us wonderfully. We for- 
got our dangerous situation, our loneliness, and our 
helplessness. Indeed, we ceased to consider our- 
selves helpless. Could we not make this great 
vessel go, and even alter its course if we chose? 

"My wife wished thoroughly to understand the 
matter. 



" ' How fast do you think we are going?' said she. 

"I replied that a mile an hour was perhaps as 
high a rate of speed as we could claim, but she 
thought we were doing better than that. The 
Gulf Stream itself would carry us some miles an 
hour, — she had read how many, but had forgot- 
ten, — and certainly our sail would help a great 
deal, besides keeping the steamer from drifting 
along stern foremost. 

" 'And then,' she said, ' as long as the vessel is 
moving at all, which way do you think it would 
be best to steer it ?' 

"I had been thinking over that matter, and had 
come to the conclusion that, with our limited facil- 
ities for moving the steamer, it would be well to 
keep before the wind. Indeed, I did not know 
any other way to sail than this, which was exactly 
the principle on which, when I was a boy, I used 
to sail little shingle boats with paper squaresails 
upon a pond. 

"And thus we sailed the vessel. We steered 
merely enough to keep the wind behind us ; and, 
as it blew from the south, I was well satisfied with 
our course, for I knew that if we sailed north long 
enough, we should near some part of the coast of 
the United States, where we should be certain to 
meet vessels that would rescue us. 

"The wind soon began to grow stronger, and it 
was not long before we were moving on at a rate 
which was quite perceptible. We did not remain 
in the pilot-house all the time. I frequently tied 
the wheel so that the rudder could not 'wobble,' as 
my wife expressed it, and went up again when the 
conduct of the sail seemed to indicate that a little 
steering was needed. At night I tied up the wheel 
with the rudder straight behind us, — I wish I 
could express the matter more nautically, — lighted 
our deck-lights, and went to bed. The first night 
the wind was quite violent, and I was afraid it 
would blow our sail away, but there was no help 
for it. I could not take the sail in, nor did I wish 
to cut it loose, for I might never get it back again 
if the wind continued. So I saw that everything 
was as tight and as strong as I could make it, and 
then I retired in the hope that I would find it all 
right in the morning, as I did. 

"One night — I think it was the fourth night after 
we set our sail — we were just going below to our 
stateroom, when my wife looked over the side of 
the vessel and gave a scream. 

" 'A light! ' she cried — 'a vessel!' I looked and 



i88 7 .] 



A FORTUNATE OPENING. 



187 



saw it. It was a little speck of light down on the " I carried her below and laid her in her berth, 

top of the water in the horizon. I did not try to revive her, but with a chilling sen- 

" ' Look at it!' she said, clutching my arm. sation of despair I ran to the pilot-house. The 

' Now it 's down behind the waves — now it 's up thought of land brought no happiness to me. In 

again ! How regularly it rises and falls! Do you a few hours we might have beaten to pieces on the 




' UP TO THE PILOT-HOUSE WE Rl'SHED, AND WE BOTH TOOK HOLD OF THE GREAT WHEEL. 



think — oh, do you really think it is 



way . 



; I stood staring at it. At last I spoke. 



; this shore where stood that light of warning. With all 

my strength I put the rudder around so as to turn 

It is the ship's bow away from the light. Whether or 



not a vessel,' I said; 'it is a light-house with an 
intermittent light.' 

"She threw her arms around my neck. 'Oh, 
happiness ! happiness ! ' she cried ; ' it is land ! ' And 
then she fainted. 



not the wind would serve in the new direction I 
could not tell, but I felt that I must do all that I 
could — and this was all. I tied up the wheel and 
went down to my wife. I found her sitting up. 
To her excited inquiries in regard to our approach 



A FORTUNATE OPENING. 



[January, 



to shore, and, as she thought, to a safe end to our 
strange voyage, I told her that I would avoid, if 
possible, drawing near to the coast at night — that 
in the morning we would be able to see what we 
were about. 

"After she had gone to sleep, I went on deck 
again and I staid there all night, going below at 
intervals. An hour or two before dawn the light 
disappeared altogether. We had floated or sailed 
away from it — at least I had reason to hope so. 
When the day broke bright and clear, I got a glass 
from the captain's room, but could see no sign of 
land. 

"My wife was much disappointed when she 



It was a pilot-boat. Scon we could distinguish a 
great figure 3 upon its well-filled sail. 

"In an hour, apparently, but it may have been 
in much less time than that, the pilot with four 
negro men clambered on board. They came up a 
rope-ladder that I let down to them. I had a 
nervous time finding the ladder, which I had not 
noticed until they called for it. 

"I can not attempt to describe our feelings, or 
the amazement of the men when I told our 
story. We were off Charleston, South Carolina. 
I asked the pilot if he could take us in with our 
sails. He said he thought he could take us along 
until we could signal a tug, but he did not consent 



x;:> ■-:.:-■ .^Tv 




' IT WAS A PILOT-BOAT. 



came on deck, but I explained that we did not wish 
to make a landing in this ship. But if we were 
near the coast we must soon meet some vessel ; 
so we kept the ship before the wind as well as we 
could, and waited, and looked out, and hoped, and 
feared, and that afternoon we saw a sail. 

"It was a small vessel and was approaching us. 
It grew larger and larger. I made it out to be a 
schooner. We stood hand in hand, with our eyes 
steadily fixed upon it. It came nearer and nearer. 



to do this until he and his men had made an 
examination of our ship's injuries. 

" 'Can't we go ashore in the pilot's vessel?' my 
wife asked. 'There are some men on board of it. 
They could take us in.' 

'"No, my dear,' I said. 'Let us stick to our 
steamer. She has floated well enough so far, and 
she will bear us to shore, I think.' 

"So she consented to stay by the steamer, and 
she felt better about it when she saw how the men 



A FORTUNATE OPENING. 



189 



went to work. They went about it as if they knew 
how. They laughed at our foresail and they set 
it right. I had not imagined there was anything 
wrong about it. They hauled up the jib and set it. 
They raised the big mainsail on the after-deck. 
The wind was fair and strong, and now the steamer 
really seemed to move. The pilot-boat sailed 
rapidly away ahead of us. The pilot thought we 
had been near the inner edge of the Gulf Stream 
when the collision occurred. He also thought that 
our sail had helped us along somewhat during 
our voyage toward the coast. There had been a 
strong south-eastern breeze during most of the 
time. 

"The next morning a tug met us, and we were 
towed up to the city, and eventually found our- 
selves at anchor in the harbor. Our vessel was 
an object of great interest, and a number of boats 
came out to us. But we did not go on shore. I 
refused to leave the vessel or to allow anybody to 
advise me to do or not to do anything. My wife 
set to work to pack up our effects. 

" I sent a telegram to the owners of the vessel in 
New York and a note to a lawyer in the city. The 
latter came on board in due time, and I put my 
case before him. By his advice I paid the pilot 
and the captain of the tug — and this took every 
dollar I had, with some moneys borrowed of the 
lawyer — and then I made, through him, the 
formal claim that I had found the steamer aban- 
doned at sea, and that I had brought her into port, 
having employed and paid for all the assistance I 
had had, except what was given me by my wife. 
And I also demanded salvage proportionate to the 
value of the vessel and cargo. 

"This scheme came into my head while the 
pilot-boat was approaching us at sea. And there- 
fore it was that I declined to go ashore in the pilot- 
boat, and so abandon the steamer to the pilot and 
his men. 

"There was a lawsuit brought by me. The 
affair was submitted to arbitration and settled 



satisfactorily. The pilot made a claim, and, by 
advice, I allowed him a portion of the salvage. 

"The vessel contained a valuable cargo of fine 
woods, coffee and other South American products, 
and, after weeks of valuations, appraisements, and 
arbitrations, during which my wife went home to 
her boy, I came into the possession of a sum which 
was to me a modest fortune. I could again go 
into business for myself, or I could live upon my 
income in a quiet way for the rest of my life. 

"Very little water was found in the hold of the 
Joseph Barker. The panic among the sailors 
had doubtless been caused by the sight of the 
waves through the gap in the side of the vessel, 
and by the spray dashing through the aperture — 
the extent of which could not be easily determined 
from the inside on account of the arrangement of 
the cargo. 

" There was great sorrow and anxiety on the 
part of the families and friends of the crew and 
passengers of the steamer, and I received hundreds 
of letters and many visits of inquiry in regard to 
the probable fate of those unfortunate persons, but 
I could tell very little, and that little was by no 
means comforting. 

"In a couple of weeks, however, news came. 
The ship that had collided with us had not put 
back ; but, at the end of the second day after the 
disaster, a schooner bound for Martinique had 
picked up all the boats except our little one and 
the overloaded boat of the first mate. It had 
then continued its voyage, no search being made 
for the steamer, which was supposed to have gone 
down. The survivors were brought to the United 
States by another schooner. 

"And now, boys," said Mr. Bartlett, "don't 
you think that was a very fortunate opening for a 
man in my circumstances ? " 

"What opening, sir?" asked several cf the boys. 

"Why, the hole in the side of the ship," said 
Mr. Bartlett. 

" Oh !" exclaimed the boys in chorus. 




190 



THE STORY OF PRINCE FAIRYFOOT. 



[January, 



*X^Me stoiy_o£jZ~eRmOE FAI'KYFOOJ^ 




N WENT the 
swineherd's 
wife and she 
prepared 
quite a good 
supper for 
F a i r y f o o t , 
and gave it 
to him. But 
Fairy foot 
was scarcely 
hungry at 

all, he was so eager for night to come, so that he 
might see the fairies. When he went to his loft 
under the roof, he thought at first he could not 
sleep ; but suddenly his hand touched the fain- 
whistle and he fell asleep at once, and did not 
waken again until a moonbeam fell brightly upon 
his face and aroused him. Then he jumped up and 
ran to the hole in the wall to look out, and he saw 
that the hour had come, and that the moon was 



so low in the sky that its slanting 
ight had crept under the oak-tree. 

He slipped downstairs so lightly that his master 
heard nothing, and then he found himself out in 
the beautiful night with the moonlight so bright 
that it was lighter than daytime. And there was 
Robin Goodfellow waiting for him under the tree! 
He was so finely dressed that, for a moment, Fairy- 
foot scarcely knew him. His suit was made out 
of the purple velvet petals of a pansy, which was 
far finer than any ordinary velvet, and he wore 
plumes, and tassels, and a ruffle around his neck, 
and in his belt was thrust a tiny sword, not half 
as big as the finest needle. 

" Take me on your shoulder,'' he said to Fairy- 
foot, "and I will show you the way." 

Fairyfoot took him up, and they went their way 
through the forest. And the strange part of it 
was that though Fairyfoot thought he knew all 
the forest by heart, every path they took was new 
to him, and more beautiful than anything he had 
ever seen before. The moonlight seemed to grow 
brighter and purer at every step, and the sleeping 
flowers sweeter and lovelier, and the moss greener 
and thicker. Fairyfoot felt so happy and gay that 
he forgot he had ever been sad and lonely in his life. 



■ S8 7 .] 



THE STORY OF PRINCE FAIRYFOOT. 



I 9 I 



Robin Goodfellow, too, seemed to be in very 
good spirits. He related a great many stories to 
Fairyfoot, and, singularly enough, they all were 
about himself and divers and sundry fairy ladies 
who had been so very much attached to him that 
he scarcely expected to find them alive at the 
present moment. He felt quite sure they must 
have died of grief in his absence. 

" I have caused a great deal of trouble in the 
course of my life," he said, regretfully, shaking 
his head. " I have sometimes wished I could 
avoid it, but that is impossible. Ahem ! — When 
my great-aunt's grandmother rashly and inoppor- 
tunely changed me into a robin, I was having a 
little flirtation with a little creature who was really 
quite attractive. I might have decided to engage 
myself to her. She was very charming. Her name 
was Gauzita. To-morrow I shall go and place 
flowers on her tomb." 

"I thought fairies never died," said Fairyfoot. 

" Only on rare occasions and only from love," 
answered Robin. " They need n't die unless they 
wish to. They have been known to do it through 
love. They frequently wish they had n't after- 
ward, — in fact, invariably, — and then they can 
come to life again. But Gauzita — " 

" Are you quite sure she is dead ? " asked Fairy- 
foot. 

" Sure ! " cried Mr. Goodfellow, in wild indig- 
nation. " Why, she has n't seen me for a couple 
of years. I 've molted twice since last we met. 
I congratulate myself that she did n't see me 
then," he added in a lower voice. " Of course 
she 's dead," he added, with solemn emphasis — 
"as dead as a door nail." 

Just then Fairyfoot heard some enchanting 
sounds, faint but clear. They were sounds of del- 
icate music and of tiny laughter, like the ringing 
of silver bells. 

"Ah!" said Robin Goodfellow, "there they 
are ! But it seems to me they are rather gay, con- 
sidering they have not seen me for so long. Turn 
into the path." 

Almost immediately they found themselves in 
a beautiful little dell, filled with moonlight, and 
with glittering stars in the cup of every flower ; 
for there were thousands of dewdrops, and every 
dewdrop shone like a star. There were also crowds 
and crowds of tiny men and women, all beautiful, 
all dressed in brilliant, delicate dresses, all laugh- 
ing or dancing or feasting at the little tables, which 
were loaded with every dainty the most fastidious 
fairy could wish for. 

" Now," said Robin Goodfellow, " you shall see 
me sweep all before me. Put me down." 

Fairyfoot put him down, and stood and watched 
him while he walked forward with a very grand 



manner. He went straight to the gayest and larg- 
est group he could see. It was a group of gentle- 
men fairies who were crowding around a lily of the 
valley, on the bent stem of which a tiny lady fairy 
was sitting, airily swaying herself to and fro, and 
laughing and chatting with all her admirers at 
once. 

She seemed to be enjoying herself immensely ; in- 
deed, it was disgracefully plain that she was having a 
great deal of fun. One gentleman fairy was fanning 
her, one was holding her programme, one had her 
bouquet, another her little scent bottle, and those 
who had nothing to hold for her were scowling furi- 
ously at the rest. It was evident that she was very 
popular and that she did not object to it at all ; 
in fact, the way her eyes sparkled and danced was 
distinctly reprehensible. 

" You have engaged to dance the next waltz with 
every one of us ! " said one of her adorers. " How 
are you going to do it ? " 

" Did I engage to dance with all of you ? " she 
said, giving her lily stem the sauciest little swing, 
which set all the bells ringing. " Well, 1 am not 
going to dance it with all." 

" Not with me?" the admirer with the fan whis- 
pered in her ear. 

She gave him the most delightful little look, just 
to make him believe she wanted to dance with him 
but really could n't. Robin Goodfellow saw her. 
And then she smiled sweetly upon all the rest, 
every one of them. Robin Goodfellow saw that 
too. 

" I am going to sit here and look at you and let 
you talk to me," she said; " I do so enjoy brilliant 
conversation." 

All the gentlemen fairies were so much elated by 
this that they began to brighten up, and settle their 
ruffs, and fall into graceful attitudes, and think of 
sparkling things to say ; because every one of them 
knew from the glance of her eyes in his direction, 
that he was the one whose conversation was brill- 
iant ; every one knew there could be no mistake 
about its being himself that she meant. The way she 
looked just proved it. Altogether, it was more than 
Robin Goodfellow could stand, for it was Gauzita 
who was deporting herself in this unaccountable 
manner, swinging on lily stems and "going on," 
so to speak, with several partners at once in a 
way to chill the blood of any proper young lady 
fairy — who had n't any partner at all. It was 
Gauzita herself. 

He made his way into the very center of the 
group. 

"Gauzita!" he said. He thought, of course, she 
would drop right off her lily stem. But she didn't. 
She simply stopped swinging a moment, and stared 
at him. 



192 



THE STORY OF PRINCE FAIRYFOOT. 



[January, 



" Gracious ! " she exclaimed. " And who are 
you ? " 

"Who am I?" cried Mr. Goodfellow severely. 
" Don't you remember me? " 

"No," she said coolly; "I don't, not in the 
least." 

Robin Goodfellow almost gasped for breath, lie 
had never met with anything so outrageous in his 
life. 

"You don't remember i/w," he cried. "Mel 
Why, it 's impossible ! " 

" Is it?" said Gauzita with a touch of dainty 
impudence. " What 's your name ? " 



ulous thing to be changed into ! What was his 
name ? " 

" Oh, yes ! I know whom you mean. Mr. , 

ah — Goodfellow ! " said the fairy with the fan. 

" So it was," she said, looking Robin over again. 
" And he lias been pecking at trees and things, and 
hopping in and out of nests ever since, I suppose. 
How absurd ! And we have been enjoying our- 
selves so much since he went away ! I think I 
never did have so lovely a time as I have had dur- 
ing these last two years. I began to know you," 
she added, in a kindly tone, "just about the time 
he went away." 



^_ 







1 PL WfJlP 



H ■ HUnK 







Robin Goodfellow was almost paralyzed. Gauzita 
took up a midget of an eyeglass which she had 
dangling from a thread of a gold chain, and she 
stuck it in her eye and tilted her impertinent little 
chin and looked him over. Not that she was near- 
sighted — not a bit of it; — it was just one of her 
tricks and manners. 

" Dear me ! " she said. " You do look a trifle 

familiar. It is n't, it can't be, Mr. , Mr. ," 

then she turned to the adorer who held her fan, — 

" it can't be Mr. , the one who was changed 

into a robin, you know," she said. " Such a ridic- 



"You have been enjoying yourself ? " almost 
shrieked Robin Goodfellow. 

"Well," said Gauzita, in unexcusable slang, 
" I must smile." And she did smile. 

" And nobody has pined away and died? " cried 
Robin. 

•' I have n't," said Gauzita, swinging herself and 
ringing her bells again. " I really have n't had time." 

Robin Goodfellow turned around and rushed 
out of the group. He regarded this as insulting. 
He went back to Fairyfoot in such a hurry that he 
tripped on his sword and fell and rolled over so 



■S8 7 .; 



THE STORY OF PRINCE FAIRYFOOT. 



193 



many times that Fairyfoot had to stop him and 
pick him up. 

" Is she dead ? " asked Fairyfoot. 

" No," said Robin ; " she is n't ! " 

He sat down on a small mushroom and clasped 
his hands about his knees and looked mad — just 
mad. Angry or indignant would n't express it. 

" I have a great mind to go and be a misanthrope," 
he said. 

"Oh, I would n't," said Fairyfoot. He did n't 
know what a misanthrope was ; but he thought it 
must be something unpleasant. 

" Would n't you ? "said Robin, looking up at him. 

" No," answered Fairyfoot. 

" Well," said Robin, " I guess I wont. Let 's go 
and have some fun. They are all that way. You 
can't depend on any of them. Never trust one 
of them. I believe that creature has been engaged 
as much as twice since I left. By a singular coin- 
cidence," he added, " I have been married twice 
myself — but of course that 's different. I 'm a man, 
you know, and — well, it 's different. We wont 
dwell on it. Let 's go and dance. But wait a 
minute first." He took a little bottle from his 
pocket. 

" If you remain the size you are," he continued, 
"you will tread on whole sets of lanciers and de- 
stroy entire germans. If you drink this, you will 
become as small as we are ; and then when you 
are going home, I will give you something to make 
you large again." Fairyfoot drank from the little 
flagon, and immediately he felt himself growing 
smaller and smaller until at last he was as small as 
his companion. 

" Now, come on ! " said Robin. 

On they went and joined the fairies, and they 
danced and played fairy games and feasted on fairy 
dainties, and were so gay and happy that Fairy- 
foot was wild with joy. Everybody made him 
welcome and seemed to like him, and the lady 
fairies were simply delightful, especially Gauzita, 
who took a great fancy to him. Just before the 
sun rose, Robin gave him something from another 
flagon, and he grew large again, and two minutes 
and three seconds and a half before daylight the 
ball broke up, and Robin took him home and left 
him, promising to call for him the next night. 

Every night throughout the whole summer the 
same thing happened. At midnight he went to 
the fairies' dance ; and at two minutes and three 
seconds and a half before dawn he came home. 
He was never lonely any more, because all day long 
he could think of what pleasure he would have 
when the night came ; and besides that, all the 
fairies were his friends. But when the summer 
was coming to an end, Robin Goodfellow said to 
him : " This is our last dance — at least, it will be 

VOL. XIV. — 13. (To be concluded.) 



our last for some time. At this time of the year 
we always go back to our own country, and we 
don't return until spring." 

This made Fairyfoot very sad. He did not know 
how he could bear to be lefi alone again, but he 
knew it could not be helped ; so he tried to be as 
cheerful as possible, and he went to the final 
festivities and enjoyed himself more than ever 
before, and Gauzita gave him a tiny ring for a 
parting gift. But the next night, when Robin did 
not come for him, he felt very lonely indeed, and 
the next day he was so sorrowful that he wandered 
far away into the forest in the hope of finding 
something to cheer him a little. He wandered so 
far that he became very tired and thirsty, and he 
was just making up his mind to go home, when he 
thought he heard the sound of falling water. It 
seemed to come from behind a thicket of climbing 
roses ; and he went toward the place and pushed 
the branches aside a little so that he could look 
through. What he saw was a great surprise to 
him. Though it was the end of the summer, in- 
side the thicket the roses were blooming in thou- 
sands all around a pool as clear as crystal, into 
which the sparkling water fell from a hole in a rock 
above. It was the most beautiful, clear pool that 
Fairyfoot had ever seen, and he pressed his way 
through the rose branches, and, entering the circle 
they inclosed, he knelt by the water and drank. 

Almost instantly his feeling of sadness left him, 
and he felt quite happy and refreshed. He stretched 
himself on the thick perfumed moss and listened to 
the tinkling of the water, and it was not long before 
he fell asleep. 

When he awakened, the moon was shining, the 
pool sparkled like a silver plaque crusted with 
diamonds, and two nightingales were singing in 
the branches over his head. And the next moment 
he found out that he understood their language 
just as plainly as if they had been human beings 
instead of birds. The water with which he had 
quenched his thirst was enchanted, and had given 
him this new power. 

" Poor boy ! " said one nightingale, " he looks 
tired. I wonder where he came from." 

'■ Why, my dear," said the other ; " is it possible 
you don't know that he is Prince Fairyfoot ? " 

"What ! "said the first nightingale— "the King 
of Stumpinghame's son who was born with small 
feet?" 

" Yes," said the second. " And the poor child 
has lived in the forest, keeping the swineherd's 
pigs, ever since. And he is a very nice boy, too — 
never throws stones at birds or robs nests." 

" What a pity he does n't know about the pool 
where the red berries grow ! " said the first night- 
ingale. 



194 



M£&% 



Ihere once luqs a I lysfic 1 Jacaw , 
^^J'':' 7 '':0^j)c\o\ impressionist pictures could draw. 
Urle' d hahe lampblacK and soot 
the sole of his foot , 



And then dash it about with his claw. 




"he. $ Mystic Macaw J 



[January, 



#1 




A GLIMPSE OF ETON SCHOOL. 
By Edwin D. Mead. 



Eton College stands in one of the most beau- 
tiful places in all England, on the banks of the 
Thames, under the very walls of Windsor Castle. 
Do you not think that the Eton boys ought to be 
very happy, with the Thames to row upon and with 
such interesting places as Runnymede and Stoke 
Pogis and Windsor Castle and the great park all 
about them ? Well, I think they are happy. 

But the poor boy king who founded Eton 
School was anything but happy. He ought to 
have been happy, for he was born on St. Nicholas's 
day. Henry the Sixth, "King of England, Lord 
of Ireland, and Heir of France," was born on De- 
cember 6, 1421 ; but of all the unhappy kings that 
ever lived, I think this poor Henry the Sixth must 
have been one of the unhappiest. 

Poor Henry's troubles began early. His father 
died when he was eight months old. The little 
king was crowned at Westminster when he was 
eight years old ; and then they took him over to 
Paris and had him crowned King of France — for 
the English claimed France, too, in those days, 
and there was war all the time. But little good it 



did Henry to be crowned King of France, for the 
French soon drove all the English out. 

At home there was fighting, too, and soon the 
everlasting Wars of the Roses began. The poor 
king, who wished nothing so much as to be quiet 
among his books and to finish Eton College and 
King's College at Cambridge, which he was build- 
ing at the same time, was made crazy by it all — 
and I don't wonder at it. He recovered his senses 
after two years, but it was not long before the rebels 
captured him and threw him into prison, and for 
five years there was another king. Then there 
came a revolution and Henry was king again, but 
only for a few months, when another battle ended 
all. He had time to hear that his son was dead 
and his wife a prisoner, and that everything was 
lost, and he died in the Tower of London, when 
Eton School, or Eton College, as its real name is, 
was thirty years old. 

So you see, life was trouble, trouble, trouble all 
the time for King Henry. I don't wonder that he 
did n't like to have those first Eton boys come over 
to Windsor Castle very often ; he knew very well 



A GLIMPSE OF ETON SCHOOL. 



195 



that Windsor Castle at that time was n't the place 
where people were happy. And when he did see 
any of the boys there, he generally gave them a 
little present of money and said, " Be good boys, 
meek and docile, and servants of the Lord." 

I think that almost the only pleasure Henry 
could have had was in seeing the walls of Eton 
rising. From the windows and terraces of his 
castle he could look down upon the men at their 
work, and watch the progress of the buildings. 
He himself laid the foundation-stone of the col- 



and if King Henry could come to life and look down 
upon Eton from the great Round Tower of Wind- 
sor, and could see the brick buildings in the green 
gardens, and scattered all through the town, — the 
libraries, and the L'pper School, and the New- 
Schools, and the Mathematical Schools, and the 
head-master's house, and all the other masters' 
houses, — I am sure that it would take him a long 
while to decide just where he was. 

I will tell you about the "collegers." When Eton 
was founded, there were to be a provost, a head- 




lege, and he soon had quite a little army of masons 
and carpenters there, most of them at work upon 
the great chapel, which he meant to have larger 
and more magnificent than even King's College 
Chapel at Cambridge. But the chapel plans were 
changed after the king's death, and the Eton build- 
ing is not nearly so fine as the Cambridge Chapel. 
But one does not see at Eton to-day much that 
was built by King Henry's workmen — only the 
great chapel and a part of the hall where the 
boys dine, portions of some of the old brick build- 
ings around the cloisters, and the Lower School, 
which formerly had above it the famous Long 
Chamber, where the seventy collegers used to sleep. 
But Long Chamber is now cut up into many rooms, 



master, a lower master, who was called the usher, 
ten fellows, ten chaplains, ten clerks, sixteen chor- 
isters, seventy scholars, and thirteen almsmen — 
for, in those old times, they used to have a place 
set apart for the poor in almost all institutions. 
The almsmen at Eton were sick men who could n't 
work. They had to know the Lord's Prayer and the 
Ave Maria and the Creed before they could be 
taken in ; and whenever they went out, they had 
to wear gowns. But the almshouse was done away 
with while Henry was yet alive; and now I be- 
lieve the "fellows" have been done away with, 
too. The "fellows" were priests, who could 
spend their whole lives in study at the college, 
but who were not allowed to marry. They had 



196 



A GLIMPSE OF ETON SCHOOL. 



[January, 



very nice rooms, and all that they had to do was to Latin and Greek have always been the great stud- 
read prayers in the chapel, and to preach sometimes, ies at Eton. Formerly, in fact, almost nothing 
The seventy scholars were to be poor boys, of else was studied — no mathematics, no geography 
good character, not less than eight years old nor except ancient geography, no chemistry, no phys- 
more than twelve when admitted, and were to ics. But all that is changed now. There is a 



receive their education and support from the col- 
lege, free of charge. The seventy scholars were 
appointed by the provost and head-master of 
Eton and the provost and two fellows of King's 
College, Cambridge; but now they are admitted 
by competitive examination, and it is considered 
a very great honor to belong to the seventy. 
These seventy are the "collegers." The other 
boys, those who live at the school at their own 
expense, are called "oppidans." Of course there 
are ten times as many oppidans as collegers. Only 
the collegers have rooms in the old college build- 
ings and dine in the hall. The oppidans live in 
the different masters' houses about the town. Every 
master has charge of thirty or forty boys, and every 
boy has a little room of his own. And very snug 
rooms they are, too, with the tables covered with 
books, and pretty things from home on the man- 
tel-shelf, and the walls decorated with photo* 
graphs and pictures of hounds and horses. And the 
School Almanac is sure to be there, and the rules of 

the boat-clubs, and 
i-li all sorts of hats, 
and caps, and 
cricket-bats, 
and pewter 
cups won in 




ENTRANCE TO THE CLOISTERS. 



science school at Eton, and a mathematical school 
also; music has taken the place of flogging, and 
there are teachers of French and German as well 
as of Latin and Greek. And the collegers are 
allowed to leave off their black gowns during play- 
hours now ; until a few years ago, they had to 
wear them all the time. 

I went to Eton twice while I was in England. 
We could see the great white chapel with its spires 
as we walked from Windsor; and the first thing that 
we saw when we went through the big gateway into 
the school yard was the statue of Henry the Sixth. 
It stands in the middle of the yard and is very much 
loved by the boys. Once, when practical jokes were 
abounding in the school, someof the boys, one dark 
night, carried off the scepter from the statue ; but 
there was such an outcry among the boys at this 
insult to the memory of the founder, that the scep- 
ter soon came back in a box. 

Across the yard, in front of us, beyond King 
Henry's statue, was the Provost's Lodge, filling 
that whole side of the square, and with the great 
clock- tower in the middle. 

On the right, as you stand in the gateway, is 
the great chapel, one of the most magnificent 
churches in all England, though not half so mag- 
nificent as Henry meant it to be; and beyond that 
is the hall where the seventy collegers dine, with 
its fine stained-glass windows, and big stone fire- 
places, and portraits of famous Etonians. On the 
left is the Lower School, with the collegers' rooms 
above it, where Long Chamber used to be ; and 
over our heads, as we stand in the gateway, is the 
Upper School. The Upper School is a very long 
room. It is full of stools for the boys, and there 
are five desks for the masters, and great curtains 
which can be drawn to divide 
the long room up into small 
rooms. There are busts of 
kings and queens and states- 
men all around ; and the 
oaken panels of the walls are 
all cut up with the names of 
old Eton boys. In one very 
small space, you can see the 
names of Chatham, Howe, 
Wellington, Canning, Gray, 
and Fox. Fox cut his name 
in enormous letters. At the 
end of the Upper School is 
the head-master's room, a 
very handsome room, full of 



-..---...- 



*es#?r 



A GLIMPSE OF ETON SCHOOL. 



I 9 7 



pictures of Athens and 
Rome. Here the sixth 
form is taught, and here 
is, or used to be, the ter- 
rible "flogging-block." 

But I think that the 
old Lower School, with 
its rows of rough, worn- 
out desks and benches, 
is even more interesting 
than the LTpper School. 
Here, too, the windows 
and the posts are all cut 
up with the names of 
those who, in the old days, ob- 
tained scholarships and went 
up to King's College at Cam- 
bridge. 

The great school yard is the 
center of everything at Eton. Perhaps a lesson is 
just over, and two or three hundred boys are gath- 
ered in little groups around King Henry's statue, 
making plans for the afternoon — all wearing their 
little black gowns and square caps with tassels on 
them. Or it is not quite lesson-time, and they are 
clustered in the cloisters under the Upper School. 
Or the chapel bell is tolling and the chaplains are 
hurrying across the square to say prayers. Or it 
is playtime, and the boys are pouring through the 
gate under the clock-tower, to cricket or "fives" 
or the river. Some of them have tall hats on and 
look to Americans like little old men. 

We went through the gate under the clock-tower 
into the cloisters ; and you may be quite sure we 
stopped in the corner to drink at the college-pump. 
All Eton boys are loyal to the college-pump ; they 
think there is no such water as that anywhere else 
in the world. 

The stairs to the Library lead from the cloisters 
in which the pump stands. There is another library 
in the new buildings, where all the boys can go and 
read ; but this is the great Library. 

" I suppose," said the old gray-bearded man in 
the library, — a tall, thin, old man, with a black 
velvet skull-cap, — after he had told us many things 
about poor King Henry, " that you Americans 
don't care much about our kings." 

We told him that we cared a great deal about 
them, and wished they all had done such wise and 
good things as did Henry when he founded Eton 
School. 

"The boys must have royal times here," I said. 

"Indeed they do ! Canning said once at one 
of the Eton dinners in London — Canning was one 
of the greatest of our Eton boys, you know — that 
whatever success might come in after life, and 
whatever ambitions be realized, no one is ever 




WINDSOR CASTLE FROM THE ETON PLAYING FIELDS. 

again so great a man as when he was a sixth- 
form boy at Eton," answered our guide. 

" Did the boys have any games a hundred years 
ago ?" I asked. 

"Games! Why, they don't begin to have so 
many games at Eton now as they had then. And 
they used to have great times at the ' Christopher,' 
which was a famous old inn here in Eton. Dr. 
Hawtrey had it broken up and made into a house 
for one of the masters. Dr. Hawtrey was our Dr. 
Arnold, you know. Nobody could translate Ho- 
mer like Dr. Hawtrey. He it was, too, who broke 
up Montem." 

" Montem ! What was Montem ? " 

"What, you never heard of Montem — Eton 
Montem ? " 

"Never! " 

" Well, an old Eton boy would tell you that 
you might as well never have been born as not to 
know about Montem. Why, Montem was as old 
as Queen Elizabeth's time, and Queen Victoria 
was very sorry to have to consent to have it broken 
up. In old times it was celebrated every year, but 
later on only once in three years. The senior col- 
leger was captain of Montem, and the next six col- 
legers were salt-bearer, marshal, ensign, lieutenant, 
sergeant-major, and steward. The captain of the 
oppidans was always a salt-bearer, and the next to 
him was colonel. The other oppidans in the sixth 
form were sergeants, and all the oppidans in the 
fifth form, corporals. It was a great thing to 
be captain of Montem; and then the captain 
sometimes made ^1000 out of it. 



198 



A GLIMPSE OF ETON SCHOOL. 



[January, 



"On the morning of Montem day, the captain 
gave a great breakfast in the Hall to the fifth and 
sixth forms. Then the boys marched twice around 
the school yard, the ensign waved the great flag, 
the corporals drew their swords, and the procession 
started through the Playing Fields to Salt Hill,* in 
a long line, accompanied by two or three regi- 
mental bands. The officers wore red tail-coats, 
white trousers, cocked hats with feathers, and reg- 
imental boots ; and the lower boys wore blue coats 
with brass buttons, white waistcoats and trousers, 



the date of the year, and a Latin motto referring 
to Montem day. 

"Everybody went to Montem. King George 
always used to go, and Queen Victoria went. 
There was always a ' Montem poet,' who dressed 
in patchwork, and wore a crown ; and he drove 
about the crowd in a donkey-cart, reciting his ode 
and flourishing copies of it for sale. 

" When the procession came to the top of Salt 
Hill, the ensign waved his flag a second time, and 
that ended the celebration ; only the boys and the 




THE JUNE PROCESSION OF BOATS AT ETON. 



silk stockings and pumps, and carried slender white 
poles. But before this, long before sunrise, the 
salt-bearers and their twelve assistants had gone, 
some on foot and some in gigs, to their places on 
all the great roads leading to Eton, to beg 'salt' 
from everybody they met. Salt meant money ; 
and everybody had to give them salt. George 
the Third and Queen Charlotte always gave fifty 
guineas apiece, and much larger sums than that have 
been given. The money all went to the captain of 
Montem, to help him pay his expenses at the uni- 
versity to which he was to go after leaving Eton. 
The salt-bearers carried satin money-bags and 
painted staves, and as receipts for the salt that 
they secured they gave little printed tickets with 



visitors all went to the inns at Windsor for a big 
dinner. 

" But when the railway was opened from Lon- 
don to Windsor, it brought down a very rough 
crowd to see Montem, so that it was no better than 
Greenwich fair. And then it broke into the boys' 
studies badly, and Dr. Hawtrey thought that it 
should better be stopped." 

But how long we were staying in the old library, 
while the sun was so bright outside and the gates 
were all open to the green Playing Fields ! Is 
there another place on earth so beautiful as Eton 
Playing Fields? We walked among the thick 
elms to the Sixth-form Bench, by the river ; we 
sat looking up at the walls of the Castle and the 



* A little eminence on the Bath road, near Eton, where the demand for contributions 

Montem came — ad montem, "to the hill. 



,vas first made, and from which the name of 



A GLIMPSE OF ETON SCHOOL. 



I 99 



great Round Tower, and back at the brick walls 
of the school, with the white chapel rising up 
high above them ; and then we walked in " Poet's 
Walk," and over the little old Sheep Bridge to the 
Cricket Field. 

The Eton boys are great at cricket. The col- 
legers used to play against the oppidans. At first 
the oppidans beat them badly, and they were so 
mortified that they put black crape on their hats, 
and hung them up in Long Chamber. But by 
and by they had a famous batter, whose name was 
John Harding, who made wonderful scores — once 
as many as seventy or eighty. He hit a ball from 
the middle of the Upper Shooting Fields, over the 
chestnut trees, into the Lower Shooting Fields — 
when you go to Eton, you can see how far that is. 
The collegers carried him back to the school on 
their shoulders, and the last bat he used is still 
kept as a trophy. 

Every summer Eton plays against Harrow, at 
Lord's Cricket Grounds, in London ; and there 
is almost as much excitement over the game as 
over the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race on the 
Thames. I went to see it when I was in London. 

Then the Eton boys play foot-ball a great deal. 
And they have a game, which is n't played any- 
where else, called "fives." I don't know much 
about fives. They used to play it in the school- 
yard, between the buttresses of the chapel; but 
now two regular fives courts have been built. 

The Eton boys have splendid times on the river. 
They row up and down for miles, and sometimes 
have races with the Westminster boys. They 
used to have a gay procession of boats every June, 
and great crowds of visitors came to see it. The pro- 
cession started at six o'clock ; the boys all dressed 
in uniform, and the steerers in very bright colors, 
and a crowd of the boys would follow along the 
banks of the river, on horseback. No boy can go 
on the river unless he can swim, so almost all of the 
Eton boys learn to swim. 

We found down by the river a jolly little round 
man, with a big, round, red face, and little, round, 
twinkling eyes. He was sitting there on the grass 
by the river, with his legs dangling over the bank. 
He told us a great many amusing stories about 
Dr. Keate and other masters, and about how the 
boys used to burn their Greek grammars in the 
yard, and let oft" fire-crackers behind the masters ; 
and how they used to sing songs in the school- 
room, so that Dr. Keate would n't know who did 
it; and how the whole sixth form once "struck" 
and threw their books into the Thames. But 
the funniest stories were about the scrapes the 
boys used to get into when they went poaching 
in Windsor Park — for they used to do that, and 
sometimes were caught and locked up. One dark 



night two of the oppidans had planned a fine ex- 
cursion. One of them — he was afterward a cab- 
inet minister of Great Britain — was getting out of 
his window very quietly, thinking he heard his 
friend below waiting for him. 

" Is all right?" he whispered. 

' • Right as my left leg ! " answered a voice from 
below, and the boy dropped into the arms of the 
head-master. 

" You ought to have been an Eton boy your- 
self," I said to the little round man. 

"Yes; I wish I had been. But they used to 
flog 'em terribly." 

" I suppose they did," I assented. 

"Why," said the little man, "Dr. Keate one 
time flogged more than eighty boys at once. They 
were fifth-form boys, and they had started a little 
rebellion against the doctor. So he had the tutors 
bring them to him, two or three at a time, after 
they had gone to bed, and he took 'em one by one ; 
it was after midnight before he was through. Well, 
at last the old flogging-block itself was carried off. 
That was when Dr. Hawtrey was master. One 
morning — it was the day after a boat-race against 
Westminster — a lot of the boys were sent up to 
his room to be flogged ; but the block was n't 
there, nor the birch, neither. Three of the boys 
managed to get the block out in the night, and 
sent it up to London. It was the seat of the 
President of the ' Eton Block Club ' up in London 
for a long time. Nobody could belong to that club 
who had n't been flogged at Eton three times. 
The boys used to talk the flogging over in their 
debating society. They don't have such flogging 
any more." 

And then the little round man told us about the 
Eton Debating Society and some queer things that 
have happened there. 

" They used to call the fellows who belonged to 
the society the Li/erati," he said ; "but they gave up 
that word long ago, and the club got the name of 
' Pop ' — I don't know how, but they called it ' Pop. ' " 

All the way back to Slough, and beyond, we 
could see, from the car windows, the long gray 
Castle and the great Round Tower, and beside it, 
among the trees, the red brick walls of Eton, and 
the tall white chapel; and the words of Gray's 
sweet poem kept running through my head : 

'■ Ye distant spires, ye antique towers, 
That crown the wat'ry glade, 
Where grateful science still adores 
Her Henry's holy shade ; 

I feel the gales that from ye blow 

A momentary bliss bestow. 

As, waving fresh their gladsome wing, 

My weary soul they seem to soothe, 

And redolent of joy and youth, 

To breathe a second spring." 



200 



A VISIT TO ETON. 



[January, 



A VISIT TO ETON. 



By Elizabeth Robins Pf.nnell. 



When I was in Windsor I lived for a week in a 
little old house on the river bank; for, as you know, 
the Thames runs through the town. From my 
window I could see the tall, gray church with its 
many windows, and the red buildings of Eton 
College, topped with their battlements and tower. 

When I went out, if I turned to my left, I looked 
up at the castle towering high above the town. 
Then I met red-coated grenadiers and fife and drum 
corps, and tourists with guide-books in their hands 
and field-glasses slung over their shoulders. But at 
certain hours of the af- 
ternoon, it seemed to me 
the only people on the 
street were a never-end- 
ing procession of young 
men and boys, all wear- 
ing tall silk hats. The 
more grown-up. who had 
on tailed coats, wore 
white cravats, as if they 
were so many youngcler- 
gymen. The younger 
boys, still in jackets, had 
black neckties. These 
were the Eton "young 
gentlemen," as the 
townspeople call them. 
By their tall hats and 
ties you may know them, 
for these Etonians must 
never be seen without 
them, except on the play- 
grounds, or on the river, 
or on their way to these 
places. When a boy, 
after foot-ball or cricket, 
is late or lazy, he slips 
on an overcoat which 
comes down to his heels. 
Occasionally it flaps open 
and shows his knee- 
breeches and long stock- 
ings. But the collar is 
carefully pulled up, so 
that you can not tell 
whether or not it hides 
a white tie. You often meet boys in this costume 
on the High street late on half-holiday afternoons. 

The castle is at one end of the High street of 
Windsor, and the college at the other. After you 



cross the bridge over Barnes's Pool, you come to the 
houses where the masters live and the boys board, 
and to the college buildings. If you pass through 
the low doorway in the latter, you find yourself in 
a large quadrangle or square, on one side of which 
is the chapel, and on the three others, school- 
rooms. In the center is the statue of Henry VI., 
who was the founder of the college. Beyond this 
square is another smaller one with cloisters 
around it, and a green grass plot lined with low 
bushes covering the open space, and here the " fel- 




THE GREAT QUADRANGLE AT ETON. 



lows" live. If you linger in the large quadrangle 
when the boys are going or coming from their 
classes, you will notice that some wear black gowns 
like those of the masters. I think these gowns 



A VISIT TO ETON. 



20 I 




must all be made of the same length, no matter to 
whom they are to be given. For I have seen them 
almost trail on the ground when on short boys, 
while often they only reach the knees of taller 
students. 

Those who wear gowns 
are "collegers," for whom 
the college was really found- 
ed. Until about the middle 
of this century, the colleg- 
ers had a rough time. They 
slept in one large and three 
small dormitories in the 
building opposite the chap- 
el and looking out on the 
large quadrangle. With 
the exception of a few old- 
er boys who were allowed 
chairs or tables, their only 
furniture was their beds. As 
they were without wash- 
stands or basins, they had, 
like Mr. Squeers' pupils, to 
wash at the pump. This, 
you must agree with me, 

was not pleasant, and so you will not wonder 
that once, as late as the year 1S38, they went and 
begged the authorities to have water brought in 
some way into their dormitories. But their peti- 
tion was refused, and they were told they would be 
wanting gas and Turkey carpets next ! Their food 
was not much better. The only meal provided for 
them was dinner, which always consisted of mut- 
ton and potatoes and beer, which was rather mo- 
notonous. On one day in the year, Founder's Day, 
they had a feast of turkey. Henry VI. meant their 
dining-hall to be a very handsome building. But 
before it was finished there was so little money 
left that the workmen had to build the upper part 
of the walls with bricks instead of the stones with 
which they had begun, so that on the outside the 
hall looks like a piece of patchwork. Perhaps the 
same thing happened with the money for the col- 
legers' expenses, for after their dinners were bought 
there seemed to be none for their other meals. 
Certain it is that they had to get their breakfasts 
and teas as best they could. It was said of them 
with truth, that they were not as well fed and lodged 
as convicts or paupers in an almshouse would be. 
And so it came to pass that even poor people hes- 
itated before sending their sons to put up with such 
hardships, and the boys who were not collegers 
looked down upon them and would have "nothing 
to do with them. 

But it is very different now. Their buildings 
have been improved and enlarged. Forty-seven 
of the oldest boys have rooms to themselves. The 



younger ones still sleep in the old hall, or Long 
Chamber as it is called. But wooden partitions 
reaching half-way to the high ceiling have been 
set up and they divide the hall into little alcoves 



AL 



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arr & 









If!" 



dsmmdkm 

'" 1?| §*S 1? 'spa's !i ', 1'1'i W 



WPI ■"! ! i mi. it l (it Winn^. 

12/ - »___ ^™*«a5.Sgi 



MASTERS HOUSES AND THE CHAPEL FROM BARNES S BRIDCE. 

or stalls, so that every boy has a place to himself. 
In it he has a bed, a chair, a chest of drawers and 
his washing-stand, and he can be comfortable 
enough. At the end of the chamber is a large open 
space, used for "kickabout," or foot-ball practice, 
which is always going on during the winter term 
when the boys are not in school. When I went into 
Long Chamber, this space was full of paper coats 
and cocked hats of all sizes, such as small children 
delight in making. A master who was with me 
asked a bright young colleger what these were 
for. '' I don't know, sir," he said. " It 's the sixth 
form's work. They Ye been at it for the last 
hour. I think it 's very babyish of the sixth form, 
sir, don't you?" But for all that, his respect for his 
elders was great enough to keep him from touching 
one of the coats. 

Life in Chamber is very sociable. During the 
day the boys are out almost all the time, either in 
their classes or on the playgrounds. But in the 
evening after "lock-up," all the young collegers 
gather around the large fire at the end of the hall ; 
for though there are fireplaces in the elder colleg- 
ers' rooms, there are none in the stalls in Cham- 
ber. To this fire they bring their books, or lines, or 
verses, or whatever they may have to do ; but when 
as many as twenty boys sit together over a cheer- 
ful fire, I wonder how much solid work is done ! 
At a quarter to ten the captain, or head boy of 
Chamber, sends them all off to their stalls, and at 
ten, the sixth-form praepostor, or monitor, comes 
in to see that they are in bed. Of course they 



202 



A VISIT TO ETON. 



[January, 



have to fag for the older collegers. Sometimes 
when the fun by the fire is at its height, there is 
heard, from one of the rooms beyond, a cry of 
"Come here!" and then all have to run at full 
speed, for the last to arrive is chosen to do the 
work of fagging, whatever it may be. The young 
tyrants whose right it is to be waited on like 
to be as near Chamber as possible, that when 
they call they may be answered promptly. There 
are times when the fag is glad that he has a fag- 
master, despite all his hard duties, for it is his 
privilege to sit in the latter's room, and if he really 
wishes to study in the evening, he can thus escape 
to a quiet, warm place. 

The collegers still use the old dining-hall, but 
the meals served there are not only better than in 
earlier days, but good and plentiful. A master 
lives in the house with them, and they are in every 
way treated like the other boys. Moreover, they 
must pass a very severe examination before they 
are admitted to college ; so that it is thought 
a great honor and mark of distinction to belong 
to the collegers. A little of the old prejudice con- 
tinues among smaller boys and new-comers, but 
it wears away as they grow older, and the collegers 
are to-day looked up to and respected. 

The number of boys who pay for their education 
at Eton is greater than that of the free scholars. 
There were so feu - good schools in England in the 
old days, that boys were sent to Eton from all 
parts of the kingdom. They boarded in the little 
town, and only went to the school buildings for 
their lessons. For this reason they were called 
oppidans, which means town-boys. They boarded 
wherever they could be taken in, and the women 
who kept boarding-houses for them were called 
"dames." Finally, when they came in greater 
numbers, the masters thought it best to have the 
town-boys under their roofs for the sake of order. 

During the day, and when not in school, the 
boys are very much their own masters. They can 
go and come as they please. But they must be in 
their houses, and then in their rooms by certain 
hours. Every evening the master calls over the 
names of his boys, at five o'clock in winter and at a 
quarter to nine in summer. He occasionally visits 
their rooms. And sometimes, if they are too 
noisy at kickabout, which in the houses goes on 
in the passages, lie puts a stop to it. It is no 
wonder his patience is tried at times. Indeed, the 
boys themselves think there can be too much of 



this good tiling. 



' Bother it ! one gets tired of 



kickabout when it goes on without intermission 
after eight, after ten, and after four, against one's 
door! " said one. 

But the master is not often obliged to come up- 
stairs and call for order. The captain, who is the 



boy highest up in the school of all those who 
board in the same house, is its real ruler. He is 
held in awe by the younger boys, and his word is 
law. The mere report that the captain is coming 
Hill quiet the most unruly. In the eyes of his 
juniors he is a much greater person than the mas- 
ter. Nothing usually pleases a small boy so much 
as to be spoken to on the street by his captain, 
while his schoolmates look on. He may be so 
embarrassed as not to be able to answer. But his 
pride lasts for many days. Indeed, he never for- 
gets it. I know an Etonian, now a master, who 
can point out the very spot where he was so hon- 
ored for the first time. 

The captain and the older boys have fags whom 
they select from members of the Lower School. 
Fagging is not easy work at Eton. Fags not only 
have to wait on their fag-masters at almost all 
hours, to bring them water and to look out for 
their rooms, but they even have to cook for them. 
All the boys of a house take their dinner together, 
but excepting in two or three houses where a new 
rule has been made, every one has his breakfast 
and tea in his own room. And for these meals the 
poor fags are cooks and waiters. There is. even a 
kitchen provided for their special use where they 
boil water, brew tea, and toast bread. Many heart- 
aches have there been in those little kitchens! 
Fancy a youngster just out of the home nursery, 
you might say, being set to making toast, when 
he knows as little about it as he does about Latin 
verses ! And yet, if it is not all right, his fastidious 
master will take him to task with all the indigna- 
tion of disappointed hunger and then send him off 
to do his work over again. But he grows hardened 
by degrees to this work, just as he does to verse- 
making, and in time can joke and laugh as he 
cooks. And if while he talks he forgets his toast 
and lets it burn, what matter? With a little experi- 
ence he learns to scrape off the black with a knife. 

Every oppidan has his own room, which he deco- 
rates to please himself. Whatever these decora- 
tions may be, he is certain to have in the most 
conspicuous place his foot-ball, cricket or boating 
cap, his house colors, a photograph of his boat 
crew, or cricket team, or foot-ball eleven, and 
always one, also, of all the boys in his house with 
the cups they have won at foot-ball, during the 
term, set out before them. 

The classes at Eton are much the same as at 
other English schools. The sixth is the highest 
form, and then follow the other forms and divisions. 
So long as they are in the Lower School the boys 
do almost all their work in the pupil-room. At 
stated hours they study with their tutors, who then 
help them to prepare their verses, so that when 
they go to their masters their work is really done. 



A VISIT TO ETON. 



20- 



The day begins with "morning school " at seven 
in the summer and half-past seven in winter, and 
this hour is the most miserable of the twenty-four. 
Then comes breakfast, plenty of time being allowed 
for the fags, after they have waited on their masters 
and perhaps run for them to the " tuck" shops for 
extra delicacies, to wait on themselves. While 
they set the kettle on to boil the second time, the 
older boys stroll leisurely into the library, for there 
is one in every house, and read the papers, or else do 
one of the many nothings which young gentlemen 
in their superior position so easily find to do. Is 
it any wonder that the fags, who, unless they would 
starve, must go on cutting bread and butter, envy 
them? Next comes a twenty minutes' service in 
the chapel, to which all Etonians must go. At the 
end, they march out in regular order, first the 
collegers in white surplices, then the oppidan 
sixth form, and finally the oppidans of the lower 
forms. 

After this, work begins in earnest with ten o'clock 
school, which lasts from a quarter of to half-past 
ten, and is quickly followed by eleven o'clock 
school. For two hours there is great quiet in Eton. 
When they are over, comes the "after twelve." 
Until two o'clock the older boys do whatever they 
like, but the unfortunate little fellows in the Lower 
School must go on construing and grinding out 
Latin verses in pupil-room. At two, however, when 
the dinner-bell rings, they also are at rest. They 
can at least eat their midday meal in peace, for 
they know that if the mutton is underdone they 
will not have to roast it the second time, that if a 
glass of water is called for they will not have to 
fetch it. 

The " after two " is very short, afternoon school 
beginning again at three. The "after four," from 
a quarter to four to a quarter-past during the win- 
ter term, is quite a favorite time for a walk on the 
High street. If you happen to be out just then, 
you will see boys in every shop in deep consulta- 
tion with tailors and bootmakers, making appoint- 
ments with photographers, looking over books, or 
more often in the confectioners', eating pies and 
sweets. The fags, too, are on duty again and are 
marketing for their fag-masters. As "lock-up" 
in winter is at five o'clock, the boys have a long 
evening in the house. This they spend sometimes 
in studying, but, as a rule, in doing whatever best 
suits them. But you must not think, on this 
account, these are always idle hours. There are 
many prizes outside of the regular course for which 
the boys compete, and then — another great reason 
for study — all those who distinguish themselves in 
their school work are, like the great cricketers and 
oarsmen, looked up to as the "swells" of the col- 
lege. There are, besides, the house debating socie- 



ties and the great school debating society called 
"Pop," — to which so many famous Englishmen 
belonged in their Eton days, — and literary socie- 
ties and magazines ; and altogether any Eton boy, 
who chooses, will find more to do than he has 
time for. 

Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are half holi- 
days, and then there are no studies in the afternoon. 
After twelve the boys have nothing to think of but 
amusement. And this, if you could see Eton with 
its beautiful shady playgrounds and the river 
winding through them, would seem to you not 
difficult to find. The only interruption to their 
long afternoon is "absence," or the calling over 
of names in the great quadrangle. No one has 
ever been able to explain why a ceremony at which 
all must be present is called "absence." But 
stranger still, now and then when the boys assem- 
ble at the appointed hour they are told there is to 
be no "absence," and they say there has been a 
"call"! Of course the boys never know before- 
hand whether it is to be "absence" or a "call." 

The first "absence" is at three o'clock, and the 
boys must come in their uniform, so that after- 
dinner games can not very well begin until it is 
over. If you want to know what "absence" is 
like, imagine a square, open place with old build- 
ings all around it, four masters in gown and cap 
standing by the wall in four different places, while 
one thousand boys all in tall hats and some in 
gowns rush in and out, and laugh and talk. 
Every one as his name is called takes off his hat, 
many waving them well in the air, so that the 
master may be sure to see them, if, because of 
the noise and confusion, he should not hear their 
answers. 

During "absence," a praepostor stands by the 
master. A praepostor is a monitor, and there is 
one for every form. Every boy in turn holds this 
office for three or four days at a time. It is his 
duty to take the names of all who do not answer 
at "absence," and find out afterward why they 
were not present. There are also two sixth-form 
praepostors, one for the collegers and one for the 
oppidans, who are appointed every week. If the 
head-master wants to speak to or reprove a boy, 
he sends for him by the sixth-form praepostor. In 
Dr. Keate's time these sixth-form praepostors 
were the busiest people in Eton, for Dr. Keate 
thought a course of flogging the best education 
the boys could have, and so was always sending 
for them. 

After three o'clock " absence," there is a rush 
for the playgrounds. Tall hats and black coats 
and trousers are exchanged for caps and flannels. 
The sheep which have been grazing peacefully all 
the morning in the sunny green fields beat a hasty 



204 



A VISIT TO ETON. 



[January, 



retreat to the shade of the Poet's Walk, and the 
place is alive with boys. In the Christmas half 
they come for foot-ball. Their field game is much 
the same as that played by all boys in other 
schools, and out of them too. But they have 
besides what they call the "wall game." This 
is peculiar to Eton, and is so old that no one 
knows when it was first played, and so difficult 
that it is almost impossible for those who have not 
had some practice to understand it. The collegers 
are usually the best players, the older among their 
number teaching the younger boys as soon as they 
come to college, while oppidans rarely learn until 
their last years at school. The playing fields 
are separated from the road by a high brick wall, 



for one party to crush the other against it. After 
perhaps five minutes of this struggle, the ball 
came out from under the feet of the players, 
and then one boy seized it and threw it toward 
a large elm-tree at a little distance from the wall, 
and upon which was a chalk mark. This was one 
of the goals, the other being the door in a garden 
wall opposite. The next minute the ball was 
brought back again, and the pushing recom- 
menced. Sometimes the players fell on top of 
one another, and those nearest the wall were 
knocked so close to it that they would have been 
seriously hurt had they not been prepared for this 
rough treatment. Three men on each side, who 
were always stationed close by the bricks, wore 




I'ALL MATC 



against which this game is always played, the cap- 
tains of the teams being called keepers of the wall. 
I saw a very exciting match between the collegers 
and a foreign team one October morning during the 
"after twelve." When I first looked at the wall, 
all I saw was a mass of figures pushing and strug- 
gling together, as if the object of the game was 



padded jackets and leggings, and close hoods 
which covered their heads, and even their ears, 
and were tied under their chins. Two masters 
were umpires. The first put the ball into the bully, 
and so great was his interest that he forgot all 
about his fresh, yellow kid gloves, and in they went 
among the muddy boots. The second was a quite 



A VISIT TO ETON. 



205 



elderly man with gray hair, but he was equally 
interested, and crouched close to the ground near 
the players, to see that the ball was not lacked 
from under the feet of the man who held it down. 
The great wall match of the year comes off on St. 
Andrew's Day. Then the 
field is crowded not only 
with boys and masters, but 
with people from the town, 
and even from London ; 

and there is sure to be a :\ 

row of excited Etonians 
perched up on the high 
wall, from which they have 
a capital view. This 
match is between the col- 
legers and the oppidans, 
the latter looking very gay 
in their orange and pur- 
ple, and the former less 
bright in their Quaker- 
like mauve and white. 
But quiet as they look, 
you may depend on it 
they will attract the more 
attention before the game 
is over, for they are al- 
most always sure to win. 

The different houses 
play the field game against 
one another for cups, and 
against the masters; while 



the summer half is one long season of delight. 
Studies go on, of course, but they become of second- 
ary account, and the great object of school life 
seems to be to excel in the cricket- field or on the 
river, Every boy has to choose between the two 

k ifi ~f/2 r 







a picked eleven of colleg- 
ers and oppidans meet out- 
side teams. Every house has its own colors, while 
those of the great field eleven are red and blue. 
One part of the Etonian uniform, which you are 
sure to notice, is the long scarf which every boy 
wears around his neck and underneath his outer 
jacket, the ends dangling between his legs. But 
this he takes off when he begins to play. 

Fives, though played all the year around, 
may be called the game of the Easter half, for it 
is the principal amusement of this season, when, 
consequently, it is not easy to get a court unless 
one engages it some hours beforehand. Though 
now common enough in other schools, fives is 
as peculiar to Eton as the wall game of foot-ball. 
It was really invented by Etonians. They used to 
play it between the chapel buttresses. Afterward, 
when they put up regular courts, these were built 
as like the old playing places as possible, and even 
a projection in the buttress, which made the game 
doubly difficult, was copied. This projection is 
known to all fives players as the pepper-box. 

But the two greatest amusements of all are those 
of the summer half — boating and cricket. Indeed, 



THE ORIGINAL ETON FIVES COURT BETWEEN THE BUTTRESSES OF THE CHAPEL. 



sports. English boys are as serious at play as at 
study, and they will not spoil their chances of 
becoming either a really good cricketer or good 
oarsman by trying to be both. It is considered 
an important moment when an Etonian decides 
whether he will be a "dry bob" or a "wet bob." 

If he decides for cricket, he is made at once a 
member of one of the cricket clubs, of which there 
are several, every one having its own field called by 
its name. These clubs are the " Lower Sixpenny," 
for boys in the lowest forms; the "Upper Six- 
penny," for those in the lower fifth form ; the 
"Lower Club," to which any boy who has reached 
the middle division of the fifth form can be- 
long; the "Middle Club," composed of older 
boys who are not very good cricketers ; and the 
great "Upper Club," to which none are admitted 
but the champions of the school, which is so 
respected by the masters that its members are 
excused from six o'clock "absence," and, in order 
to save more time, is allowed to have tea in the 
Poet's Walk. It is given all these privileges 
because it is its duty to keep up the reputation 



206 



A VISIT TO ETON. 



[January, 




THE EXAMINATION IN SWIMMING AT ETON. 



of Eton for cricket. Every year there are matches 
between Eton and Harrow, and Eton and Win- 
chester. Etonians and Harrovians meet at Lord's 
Cricket Ground in London, a beautiful large field 
which, when it was first used for cricket, was really 
in the country. But since then houses have been 
built up around it, and it is now in that part of 
London called St. John's Wood. The match 
comes off in the early part of July, when the gay 
season is at its height. Everybody goes to it. 
The head-masters and masters of both schools and 
old Harrovians and Etonians with their families, 
from gray-haired grandfathers to little fellows just 
out of skirts, who already look forward to the days 
when they too will be great cricketers. And 
you see officers and grave members of parliament, 
and old ladies and pretty young girls sitting in 
drags and carriages, all as excited and eager as 
the players themselves. There is a grand stand 
for Harrow and another for Eton, and almost all 
the lookers-on wear the light blue or the dark blue 
ribbons. Every one stays all day, and the lunch- 
eons they have brought with them are unpacked 
and eaten on the grounds. And greater enthu- 
siasm you have never seen ! Whenever a boy 
makes a big hit or a fine catch, there are great 



shouts of applause from his party and hisses from 
the other. And when the match is over, the 
winning side seize the boy who has made the most 
runs and lift him on their shoulders and carry him 
around the field in triumph, just as the Rugby 
boys carried Tom Brown. Harrow and Eton have 
had fifty-nine matches since they first began to 
play together. Of these Harrow has won twenty- 
four and Eton twenty-five, the others having been 
drawn games ; so you see they are close rivals. 

The match with Winchester boys comes off one 
year at Winchester and the next at Eton. It 
always takes place late in the spring, when the 
trees and grass at Eton are at their greenest, 
and the sun shines softly on the old time-stained 
buildings. The flannels of the players and the 
gay dresses of the ladies who come to look on fill 
the field with bright color. The river runs close 
by, and the towers and battlements of Windsor 
Castle rise far above it in the distance. If you 
were to see Eton then, you would say there could 
be no lovelier place the world over. What need 
of " absence " on these days ? For what boy would 
stir from the grounds until he knew whether or no 
the light blue of Eton was victorious ? Indeed, the 
masters seldom break up a match by forcing the 



A VISIT TO ETON. 



207 



boys to leave their game to be present in the quad- 
rangle at three and at six. Even Dr. Keate, the 
great boy-floggcr, whenever there was a cricket- 
match, called their names in the cricket-field. 

The "wet bobs" have their boats down by the 
bridge, over the river, where it crosses the High 
street. All of the "wet bobs " have to know how 
to swim, and many, before they are allowed to get 
in a boat, go through a thorough training under 
the direction of a regular teacher. There are, of 
course, many boating crews, just as there are 
cricket clubs, and only the best oarsmen row in 
the races with the other schools. On half-holidays 
the boys can go out after three. But the hour 
they love even better is the " after six," when they 
start with the sun low in the west and come home 
in the cool of the soft English twilight. But per- 
haps best of all is when on half -holidays they are 
excused from six o'clock "absence" if they will 
promise to row as far as Maidenhead. I do not 
think they find it a very hard condition. It is lit- 
tle enough to pay for six long hours on the river, 
winding with it between meadows and pleasant 
woody places, and meeting the many shells and 
punts, and row-boats, and steam yachts with 
which in spring and summer evenings it is sure to 
be crowded. 

The most exciting race of the year is at Henley, 
when they row against other schools, meeting 
among them their rivals at cricket, the Westmin- 
ster boys. 

But the day of days is the Fourth of June. Then 
the " wet bobs" all turn out in full force, and have 
a gay procession of boats on the Thames. This 



is an old, old custom. At first the boys wore the 
most extravagant dresses, so that it looked as if 
they were having a fancy party on the water. 
Every year they changed their costumes, each new 
set trying to outdo the last. But in 18 14 a regular 
uniform, much the same as that now worn, was 
adopted. This was, for the boys in the upper 
boats, blue cloth jackets and trousers, striped 
shirts, and straw hats decorated with artificial flow- 
ers and the name of the boat. The only differ- 
ence for the boys of the lower boats was that 
white jean trousers were worn instead of blue 
cloth. The coxswains of the boats went on wear- 
ing fancy dresses for some years longer, but at last 
they also gave them up for the cocked hat and 
uniform of naval officers. Dr. Keate, though he 
pretended to know nothing of these processions, 
always had "lock-up" a half an hour later on the 
Fourth of June ; and Dr. Goodall, who was provost 
for many years, used to say he wondered why 
his wife invariably dined early on that day, and 
ordered her carriage for six. But now the head- 
masters and the other masters go to see the river 
parade, and more people come from London than 
for the cricket match, and the banks of the Thames 
about Windsor are lined with spectators. The 
boys are reviewed, and then they toss oars, and 
away they go amidst great applause, and up the 
river as far as Henley, where they have a supper 
of duck and green peas, to which they have been 
looking forward for months as the best part of the 
fun. And then there are fireworks and a brilliant 
illumination, and for the time being, everything at 
Eton but play and pleasure is forgotten. 








THK "TORTl'RE CHAMBER.' 



20S 



THE GALLEY CAT. 



[January, 




By Margaret Vandegrift. 



Old Bob, the sea-cook, late at night, 
Sat by the galley-fire's warm light, 
And talked to the little midshipmite 

Of this and that. 
There was nobody there to set him right 

But the galley cat. 



" You '11 not say, ' You 've give us that before,' 
And you '11 not say, doleful, ' Is there much more?' 
And you '11 not break out, and laugh, and roar, 

For I can't stand that ! 
She never calls me an old smooth-bore, 
Don't the gallev cat. 



He loved her much, for all she could do 

In the way of speech was a well-meant " Mew"; 

And old Bob said that he always knew 

What she meant by that. 
She never says what I say aint true, 

Don't the galley cat ! " 



So, if you '11 be just as civil as her, 

Or as near as you can', without the purr. 

And not rub me the wrong way of the fur,- 

There 's a deal in that, — 
I '11 spin you a first-class yarn, yes, sir, 

Of that self-same cat. 



" Well, neither do I," said the midshipmite; 
" Come, Bob, we are all by ourselves to-night; 
Now, spin me a yarn, and, honor bright, 

And certain, and flat, 
I '11 be just as quiet and just as polite 
As the galley cat." 



'T was a pitch-dark night, in the Indian seas ; 
The wind was blowing a stiffish breeze, 
And we were n't exactly taking our ease, 

You may bet your hat ; 
We were rolling about the deck like peas, 

All but the cat. 



THE GALLEY CAT. 



209 




" But you need n't think she had gone below 
Because of the racket above ; oh, no ! 
She did n't mind a bit of a blow, — 

She was used to that. 
She 'd a corner on deck where she 'd always go, 

Had the galley cat. 



Now, I '11 not go wasting the time to tell 
How it came about that I slipped, and fell 
From the mast to the raging sea, but — well, 

I 'd have drowned like a rat 
Before they 'd so much as rung the bell, 

But for that there cat ! 



A body with half an eye can see 

That she 's most especially fond of me ; 

She follows 'round wherever I be. 

So there she sat, 
With one eye on the men and one on the sea, 

Did the galley cat. 

Vol. XIV.— 14. 



What did she do ? She flung me a line ! 

I could see her yellow eyeballs shine, 

As she sat in the stern-sheets, wet with brine, 

And I steered by that ; 
She carried the end to a friend of mine. 

Did the galley cat ; 



2IO 



THE GALLEY CAT. 



[January, 




" And he hauled me up — but I make no doubt, 
If he had n't, slie would 'a' pulled me out. 
For she knew right well what she was about; 

She warn't no flat. 
But you ought to have heard the sailors shout 

For the galley cat ! " 



" She — flung you a rope ?" gasped the midshipmite, 
As if he could n't have heard aright, 

" I '11 not say anything impolite " 

" You stick to that," 
Said Bob ; " Can't you even trust your sight? 
Why, there 's the cat ! " 




A CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY. 



21 I 



A CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY. 

( Concluded. } 

By Rose Lattimore Allixg. 



The girls were on hand again in the afternoon, 
but this time the air was as sweet as it had been 
disagreeable the day before. 

"It seems silly" to put so pretty a thing in a 
drawer out of sight, does n't it?" asked Madge, 
sneezing, as she sifted the heliotrope powder into 
a dainty bag. 

" No," Nellie said; " I think it is lovely not to 
have everything for show. Sachet bags are like 
secret virtues, I suppose ; — not that I have any of 
the latter myself," she added with a laugh. 

"Oh, by the way, how is your secret charity 
coming on ?" asked Floy indifferently, her whole 
soul absorbed in tying a small bow of blue and 
pink ribbon. 

"Finely, I thank you; but it is so secret that 
even you shall not know it, my dear," replied Nell. 

" Have you really unearthed some thankless 
recipient of your wealth ? " questioned Madge in- 
credulously. 

" You don't have to dig so deep as you think 
before finding all that could be desired in the 
way of poverty," Nell said evasively. " But, 
girls, you need n't try to find out my plan, which 
is a very small one indeed, for I sha'n't tell you 
anything about it ; at least, not until I find out 
whether I think the experiment pays. So far, I like 
it." And Nell stitched away defiantly, as though 
she momentarily expected the girls to laugh at her. 

But they did n't, and instead of deriding, Floy 
said kindly, " I believe I envy you, for I am almost 
cross over these everlasting presents ; and the ne- 
cessity of getting something for Belle Nash is the 
last straw." 

" Well, I 've broken that straw," Nell remarked, 
snipping off some silk as though the action illus- 
trated the summary way in which she had disposed 
of the question. 

"Why, have you finished your present for her 
already ? " exclaimed Floy. 

" Not at all. I mean that I am not going to 
give her a present." And Nell's scissors snapped 
quite savagely. 

" But she has something for you, and probably 
surmises that this little bird has told you so," ob- 
jected Madge. 

"Very well; if she is disappointed, it is her own 
fault, not mine," declared Nell. 

" But it will be so awkward," Floy suggested. 

" It will be more awkward to keep up the ex- 



change, year after year. Somebody will have to 
stop some time, and I 'm going to stop now before 
I begin : is n't that bright of me?" 

" Yes, Nellie, it is a brilliant thought," said 
Floy; "and I believe I '11 follow your shining 
example." 

So, with a great deal of laughter over their talk, 
and a great deal of sneezing over their work, the 
afternoon faded into the cold gray of early twilight, 
and once more Nell stood alone at the window — 
this time not idly, but eagerly watching the little 
lamp-lighter. 

It was as she thought — bare hands, no over- 
coat, no scarf. Nell peered at him as he came 
running toward the house, and then she called 
her mother to the window. 

"Here comes the boy I was telling you about, 
Mamma. Look at his clothes. Would n't it be 
dreadful to have Alf dressed that way in this 
weather?" 

Mrs. Hildreth looked, and said with a mother's 
pity: "Yes, that is too bad, Nellie dear, and we 
must do something for the boy. To-morrow we 
will see what we can find among Alf's things ; 
clothes that Alf has out-grown will probably fit the 
lad. I 'm glad you discovered this chance of do- 
ing something for somebody else." 

"Discovered?" Nell repeated gravely. "The 
chance has been here under our eyes twice a day. 
I 'm only learning to see a little. But, Mother, I 
wish to give something. I have a grudge against 
myself and I wish to do a little by way of atone- 
ment." 

Mrs. Hildreth patted her daughter lovingly, and 
suggested that after they had made up a package 
of what they had in the house, Nell could add 
whatever was lacking. 

When Alf appeared, puffing and blowing and 
as hungry as a bear, Nell waylaid him on his way 
to beg the cook to have cakes for supper. 

"Did you find out anything?" she asked 
eagerly. 

"Find out anything? Rather! I found out 
how to make a full-fledged American eagle on the 
ice," he answered wickedly, trying to escape from 
her firm grasp. 

"No, no, bad boy! you know perfectly well 
what I mean — anything about the little lamp- 
lighter? " 

"Oh, fudge ! What made me forget that? But 



212 



A CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY. 



[January, 



see here, Nell, you must give a fellow time. I 'm 
a hard-worked man, I am," he pleaded, with a 
droll whine in his voice. 

Nell knew his tricks too well to be deceived by 
this fraud of his ; so she only retorted, laughing, 
''Poor fellow, earning your daily cakes — but 
could n't you let out part of the job of skating all 
the morning and coasting all the afternoon? It 
does seem too much for a frail reed like you ! " 

Alf laughed, and darting into the kitchen to tell 
Maggie to "make a lot of 'em," he re-appeared, 
remarking, " Well, now, what is it you want to 
know? — Oh, yes, I remember! You wanted me 
to find out how much toboggans cost. Well, I did. 
I love to accommodate you. Real whoppers, big 
enough to hold you and me and another fellow, 
cost — what! is n't that it?" 

Nell walked serenely toward the door, wise 
enough to know that she would gain nothing, and 
only gratify Alf's inveterate mood for teasing, by- 
showing any annoyance. 

"Oh, come back!" he said, relenting. "Let 
me see — oh, the gentleman who illuminates the 
highway! — Yes, now that I think of it; I called 
around at his apartments to-day, and presented 
my lady's compliments." 

" What about him ? Do be quick, Alf! " 

" Well, milord lives, so to speak, away down on 
Hickory street, and he is the son of poor but dis- 
honest parents." 

"Really?" 

" Well, his father is a shady old party ; but his 
mother moves in the society of a broom and scrub- 
bing-brush in down-town offices." 

"Alf, you 're a darling!" exclaimed Nell. 

" Tell me something I don't know already," he 
responded saucily. " I was about to say," he 
added, " that I inquired at the banks, and at the 
best tailor shops, but failed to find his name at 
either, so I suspect he 's worse off than the Man 
without a Country." Then, seeing Nell's dis- 
tressed look, he continued in a different tone : 
" Yes, Nell, honor bright, I should freeze dressed 
in his clothes ; and his father is a good-for-nothing, 
who mends umbrellas when he 's sober ; but his 
mother is good for as much as she can possibly 
do." 

"How did you find out all that?" Nell de- 
manded admiringly. 

" I asked him." 

"Whom?" 

" The boy himself." 

" You did n't ! " 

"I did." 

"Why, what did you say?" 

"I said, 'Hullo!'" 

"What did hesav?" 



" He said, 'Hullo, yourself!'" 

" How did you manage to find him at all ? " 

" I just waited on the sidewalk until he came 
along" . 

" But, Alf," said Nellie, still a little worried for 
fear her impetuous and not always discreet brother 
either had been rude or had raised the suspicion of 
the boy, "what excuse had you for speaking to 
him at all ? " 

" Well, you see, I was just^skating along the 
sidewalk, not noticing him, you know, when, all 
of a sudden, I came within an inch of tripping 
him up, as I accidentally on purpose lost my bal- 
ance. Was n't that rather neat? " 

" Beautiful ! Go on ! " cried Nell delightedly. 

"Well, the next thing for any fellow to do 
would be to say ' Hullo ! ' so I said it. And the 
proper thing for the other fellow to say then is 
' Hullo, yourself! ' and he said that, as I told you." 

" Oh, do be quick ! What next ? " asked Nell. 

•' Why." said Alf, " I told him that the ice was 
so rough that I guessed I 'd have to give up skat- 
ing ; and he said the ice on the canal was ' prime.' 
And then I asked him to let me see if I could 
light the next lamp as quickly as he did. So he 
gave me some matches, and I kicked off my skates 
and trotted along with him. Of course when he saw 
I was a jolly one, he thawed ; and when a fellow- 
thaws, you can get almost anything out of him." 

Alf chuckled, while Nellie said, enthusiastically, 
" I declare, you did it very cleverly ! — Well ? " 

" Well, in the course of our remarks," said Alf, 
" I found out that he had no skates, and had n't 
time to use them if he had, excepting on moon- 
light nights. For he works all day at opening the 
big door down at McAlpine & Hoyt's ; only, on 
short winter days, his little brother takes his place 
when it comes time for him to light the lamps." 

"Down at McAlpine & Hoyt's," mused Nell. 
" Why, I never thought about all those boys, cash- 
boys and door-boys; they 've always seemed almost 
like wax figures. Then I can see him myself, when 
I go to get something for him at that very same 
store." 

"Get something for him!" repeated Alf, open- 
ing his eyes wide. 

" Yes, that 's my secret," said Nell; "and vou 
are uncommonly good to do all this for me with- 
out knowing why I wanted to find out about him." 

"It was a strain," he sighed; "but what are 
you up to, Nell ? " 

"Why, Alf Hildreth," said Nell; earnestly, "do 
you know that that boy has to turn out the gas on 
these pitch-dark, freezing-cold mornings, when you 
are fast asleep, as snug as a bug in a rug ? " 

" Perhaps it 's somebody else," Alf suggested. 

"But it is n't!" answered Nell. "1 woke up 



A CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY. 



213 



this morning at half-past five and saw him with 
my own eyes." And she looked triumphant. 

"Jingo ! " exclaimed Alf. ."That 's rather rough, 
I must say. We '11 find him stuck like an icicle in 
a snow-drift one of these days ! " And Alf now 
seemed sufficiently impressed to satisfy Nellie's 
sympathetic heart. 

" No, we '11 not — for you and I, Alf, are going 
to fix him up as warm as you are ; that is, Mother 
is going to give him some of your old clothes, and 
I am going to add whatever else is necessary." 

"But if he is a proud chap, it will make him 
angry to have a lot of my old things," Alf objected, 
yet all interest. 

" But he is n't to know who gives them — that 's 
the secret ! " said Nell. " On Christmas Eve, you 
and I are going to tie the things upon the lamp- 
post, where he will find them. Wont that be fun ? " 

Alf expressed only partial satisfaction with the 
plan, again objecting that some other early bird 
would get the worm. 

"I didn't think of that," and Nell drew her 
brows together. " Then we must get up very, very 
early. Would n't that do ? " 

" Perhaps. But then if you tie 'em to the post 
in front of our house he '11 suspect who put 'em 
there," said Alf. 

" That 's so ! " said Nell. " Oh, Alf, how clever 
you are when once you stop teasing and give your 
mind to anything! Now think out how to meet 
this new difficulty." 

Alf stuffed his hands into his crumby pockets, 
walked to the window and whistled " Over the 
Garden Wall." 

"I have it!" he presently said, slapping his 
knee as though enjoying a joke. " We '11 tie the 
duds to the next lamp-post, the one in front of 
skinflint Salmon's house. Nobody would ever sus- 
pect him of giving away a cent, and Jimmy will be 
all at sea ! " 

" Who is Jimmy? " 

"Jimmy? Why, he's your boy," said Alf; 
adding, " Oh, did n't I tell you? You see, on my 
trip down the street, in my new office of lighting 
lamps, another boy called out to your boy, ' Hi, 
Jim ! how you vas ? ' So, on my way back, I inter- 
viewed that boy, and found out that your boy's name 
is Jim Walden, and all about his father and mother. 
I tell you, I feel like a successful private detective." 

Nell patted him on the back, assured him she 
should require his services again, and hurried into 
the dining-room with him. 

These plans had matured so rapidly, that as yet 
Nell had had little time to think how she felt in 
her new guise of " good girl"; but she was con- 
scious, as she started on positively her last shop- 
ping expedition, that there was an added interest 



to this very interesting world, and, as she neared 
the great swinging door of McAlpine & Hoyt's, 
that it really was a very interesting world indeed. 

Ah, there he was, pulling the door open in a 
wooden sort of way ! She supposed he had 
always been there ; she had never noticed ; some- 
how the door always swung away for her; she had 
never thought how it happened. On that particular 
morning, it was snowing hard, and she had carried 
her umbrella; and as Jimmy was putting it in the 
rack, and selecting a check to give her in return, 
she had an unusually good chance of getting a look 
at him. Yes, it was as she thought ; he was thin 
and under-fed, his clothes were too small for him, 
and poor in quality at best, his trousers so worn 
that the original material was scarcely visible for 
the patches ; his shoes were old. 

"Why," Nell thought, " Alf got out his rubber 
boots this morning. Jim shall have rubber boots ! " 

She was gazing at him with pity and determina- 
tion in her eyes, when she became conscious that 
he was holding out toward her the little brass check 
for her umbrella. 

" Oh, thank you ! " she said, recovering herself, 
and stepping on into the store. 

Jim looked wanly surprised at this civility, while 
Nell sped down the aisle to the shoe department, 
where she felt rather queer as she gave the order; 
•• Boots for a boy of about thirteen, 1 think." 

Next, at the gentlemen's counter, she picked 
out a pair of wristlets and mittens, glancing un- 
easily about her, for she had agreed to meet 
Madge at ten o'clock at the ribbon-counter, and 
she did n't wish to be discovered making these 
surreptitious purchases. When she had added 
three pairs of warm stockings, she gave her 
address, to which the goods were to be sent, and 
hurried away with a sense of relief that now, as her 
purse was absolutely empty (the boots not having 
entered into her previous calculations), the per- 
plexing question of whether to get this or that, or 
blue, or olive, or pink, was over for a whole year. 
And thus it happened that when Madge arrived, 
she found a very impecunious and yet very con- 
tented girl awaiting her. 

When Mrs. Hildreth added her collection, Nell 
was astonished at the size of the pile. There was 
a complete suit that Alf had outgrown ; a warm 
overcoat, cast aside for the same reason ; a tele- 
scope cap, that could be pulled down over the ears ; 
a pair of shoes, and some underwear. 

" Whew ! " commented Alfred. " Why, you '11 
have to tie the lamp-post to the bundle ! Let 's 
see if you have n't left some of my things in the 
pockets ! " And he proceeded to rummage, but in 
so awkward and embarrassed a manner, that Nell 
kept a suspecting eye upon him, and so plainly 



214 



A CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY 



[January, 



saw him slip something into a pocket ; but she 
discreetly looked away again, just in time. 

Alfred evidently had made some donation on his 
own account, and was so ashamed of having done 
anything in the least like the sweet little boy he 
had so often read about, that it made him actually 
cross to think of a possible resemblance ; so that 
he " evened up " by scolding about having to get 
up so early. 

" Dear me ! " thought Nellie ; " he really must 
have made quite a sacrifice to feel at liberty to be 
so cross about it afterward." 

But when Alf had marched off, with a great show 
of cold indifference to the whole performance, Nell 
just peeped into the pocket of the vest, where she 
found a little, heavy, hard, round package marked 
"for skates," which, she concluded, contained 
dollar coins. 

"Dear old boy! " she said to herself, her eyes 
shining, " he shall be as cross as two bears, if he 
likes ! When he is trying so hard to save for a 
toboggan, too ! " And then she wrapped the whole 
collection in a stout paper, and tied upon the out- 
side a big card on which " Merry Christmas, Jim 
Walden," was written plainly. 

Alf went to bed early, but Nellie was kept awake 
until quite late, doing up and labeling her other 
gifts. Still she heroically set her alarm clock for 
half-past four, and promised to arouse her brother 
in time to have him put the bundle in its place 
before Jim came around. 

Nell awoke with a start and looked at her clock. 
Horrors — it was two minutes after five! What 
could be the matter with the alarm ? With a 
sickening feeling of disappointment she rushed to 
the window and looked out. Yes, it was too late — 
the lights were going out down the street. She 
looked regretfully toward the lamp-post, where 
the bundle should appear — and could she believe 
her eyes ? A great bundle was hanging from one 
of the outstretched arms ! In tingling perplexity 
she rushed to Alf's room. There he was, snugly 
tucked in bed, and apparently fast asleep; but 
she gave a little shiver of mingled cold and joy as 
her bare foot brushed against a suspiciously damp 
rubber boot. 

"Alf, Alf! do wake up! Merry Christmas, Alf ! " 
Nell exclaimed, giving her brother a vigorous 
shake; but he only turned over, muttering sleep- 
ily. " Let me alone ! it 's the middle of the night ! 
What are you talking about ?" 

" Oh, Alf, do get up ! I saw the bundle there 
all right, and Jim is coming ! " 

But Alfred showed no further sign of life, so 
Nellie hurried down the hall without him, wrap- 
ping herself in a big blanket as she went. 



How cold and crisp the white world looked ! 
The stars were keeping their faithful watch over 
this as they did over the first Great Gift, and even 
the gas-jet just above the bundle seemed to shed 
a brighter radiance than the others. 

Nellie pressed her face close against the window- 
pane as a slender figure came zigzagging up the 
street, and yet closer as it came nearer. 

"Boo ! this is a colder morning, or night, or 
whatever-you-may-call-it, than they usually make, 
it seems to me," exclaimed Alf, suddenly appear- 
ing at her side. 

" Oh, good ! I was afraid you 'd miss it," whis- 
pered Nell, as Jim came opposite the house. " But 
how did you manage about the bundle and the 
clock?" she asked. " I was dreadfully frightened 
at first." 

"A little trick of mine," replied Alf. "You 
see I woke up, and wondered what time it was; 
so I went to look at your clock, and found that it 
was just twenty-five minutes past four. I thought 
it would be a shame to wake you for nothing, and 
I set the alarm half an hour ahead, threw on some 
duds, ran over and hung up the package, and then 
came back and crawled into bed again to get warm. 
But I think I need clothes more than Jim needs 
them at present; this bed-spread is rather thin." 

"Oh, Alf! What if he shouldn't see it?" ex- 
claimed Nell. 

" Give him an opera-glass," replied her brother. 

" He must be almost frozen," said Nell. " And 
see how quickly he is up and down again ! " 

Jim was speeding along as though wolves were 
after him, and as these two shivering spectators 
stood close together watching, he flew along to the 
very post in front of skinflint Salmon's — up — 
up — and out went the light ! 

" Oh," gasped Nell, " he didn't see it ! " 

" S — h! He is n't jumping down, though," said 
Alf; " he 's striking a match ! " 

They could just see him hold the flickering 
splint close to the bundle; then out went its feeble 
light. But he soon struck another, and this time 
relit the gas, and clung to the post, hugging it 
while he took a long look at the card. 

" Oh, now he knows it 's for him ! " said Nellie, 
breathlessly. — Yes, now it dawned upon the poor 
little chap that he was " Jim Walden," and that 
a real Christmas, if not a merry one, was be- 
ginning. 

Holding on with one arm, he swung out to take 
a look around. There was no one in sight — 
only the silent houses, the untracked snow, half 
the street dark, the rest spotted with light. He 
did not know that two pairs of eager eyes saw him 
jerk the string loose, tear a small hole in the 
paper just to make sure it was no joke, then clasp 



A CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY 



215 




HE CLUNG TO THE POST, WHILE HE TOOK A LONG LOOK 
AT THE CARD." 

his treasure, turn out the light, slide down, — bun- 
dle and all, — take a rapid tack up to the next post, 
to the next, to a third and a fourth, until at last they 
lost sight of him in the snowy distance. 

The great relief of Christmas day had come, 
with its happy open secrets. The three girls 
were again together, and with unburdened minds 
and untrammeled tongues were telling all they had 
known or did know about everybody's presents. 

" Oh, Nell ! " broke in Madge, " what came of 
your scheme of giving a present for sweet charity's 
sake ? " 

"Well, that was rather a failure," answered 
Nell, peering into a pocket of her new cardcase, 
and then admiring anew the silver monogram on 
it. "Yes, that did n't turn out as I expected." 
And now she laughed outright. " You know my 
plan was to give something where I could n't pos- 
sibly get a return, but I did get something back 
again — something out of all proportion to my 
small outlaw" 



"Something back again!" both exclaimed, 
half catching the hidden meaning in her words. 

" Don't poke fun at me, girls," she resumed, with 
a warning quaver in her voice ; " but if you only 
knew the immense amount of happiness and peace 
of mind I got for four dollars and a quarter ! " 

Nell could think of no adequate ending to her 
sentence, so she broke off with a mere exclamation 
point in voice and face ; while Madge said, with her 
eyebrows disappearing up under her bang, "Why, 
what under the sun did you do ? " 

" Wait," Nellie laughed, going to the window. 
" Wait a few moments, and I '11 show you." 

The day was shading off into the twilight, as the 
girls crowded close together — two of them to see 
they knew not what. Nell's quick eye soon spied 
a muffled form come into sight around a corner. 
Her heart gaveathrob — but — why! it was Alfred, 
running toward home, and firing snowballs at every- 
thing as he came. 

Nell secretly wondered if he had hurried on 
purpose to see Jim pass ; evidently not, for he 
slammed the front door and she heard him making 
his noisy way toward the back part of the house. 

The girls begged to be told what they were to 
look out for, but Nell only shook her head in denial, 
talking about other things, while she nervously 
kept her watch, until — there he really was! tramp- 
ing comfortably through the snow, snug and warm, 
rubber boots, double-breasted coat, telescope cap, 
mittens and all. 

Nellie's explanation to the girls was a short one, 
but they went home feeling that somehow her 
Christmas had been merrier than theirs. 

Nell was sorry that Alf had missed the fun of see- 
ing the transformation, and was going in the direc- 
tion of the dining-room to search for him, when he 
came flying in through the kitchen door shouting: 
" I say, Nell, did you see him ? " 

" Oh, Alf, why were n't you looking? " 

"Looking!" exclaimed Alf. "I was gazing, 
spellbound ! Did n't he look fine ? Blest if I did 
n't think at first that it was I myself going along ! " 

" Where were you?" Nellie asked with round 
eyes. 

Alf put his hand to his mouth and whispered 
loudly, " In the coal-bin ! I intended to meet 
him on the street, but at the last moment I was 
afraid I 'd smile too loudly, so I thought I 'd bet- 
ter skip in behind the cellar window ! " 

Nellie laughed, Alf laughed, and then they both 
laughed until Alf suddenly asked in sepulchral 
tones : 

" I say, Nellie, are n't you afraid we '11 die 
young? — we 're so very good, you know! " 

And those two silly, happy conspirators laughed 



2 l6 



JUAN AND J U A N I T A . 



[January, 









JUAN AND JUANITA. 
By Frances Courtenay Baylor. 



Chapter III. 

THE fourth year of their captivity found Juan 
and Juanita well-grown, strong children, perfectly 
healthy, as rough and as tough as the cubs they 
had stolen from a bear, and almost as wild and 
brown. If the consuming desire of their mother's 
heart could have been gratified and she could have 
seen them, she would certainly never have recog- 
nized her fair, refined-looking children in these 
young barbarians, who were hardly to be dis- 
tinguished from their Indian playmates; and if 
Don Jose (himself now an ancestor) ever looked 
down on the last representatives of the ancient 
Maria Cruz de las Santas family, he must, indeed, 
have been shocked at their appearance. It was 
well that the Senora, their mother, did not see 
them. She would have been afflicted by a thousand 
things to which they had grown quite accustomed, 
which they had, indeed, ceased to regard as evils. 
Her children were now as dirty, as daring, as tat- 
tered and as nondescript in costume, as any Co- 
manche of them all, and were, consequently, in high 
favor with the tribe. It is not wonderful that the 
little captives preserved few of the habits and tra- 
ditions of their country and family. Little remained 
to them of the religious teaching they had learned 
at their mother's knee, and that little was only re- 
membered when they were in great straits. Their 
Spanish was growing quite rusty from disuse. 
Gentleness and politeness were not fashionable 
traits in the society in which they found them- 
selves, and as for cleanliness — well, as the ancients 
knew, dirt is "a painless evil" to all children, 
who, in this respect, are natural savages ; and the 
poor little Cruz de las Santas, if they had been 
ever so much inclined to be dainty, would have 
found such refinements as baths, soap, and brushes, 
quite out of the question. 

One thing they had not lost, and that was their 
love for their mother. This was their salvation. 
Without it, they would have become part and par- 
cel of the tribe into which they had been adopted. 
The vine-clad hacienda, the garden, the flocks, 
all the features of their old life had grown misty 



and unreal to the children : they had become inter- 
ested to a certain extent in their actual surround- 
ings, and they enjoyed the free, wild life they 
were leading. But even when they were most 
contented, the thought of their mother kept alive 
the wish to return to civilization ; her sweet face 
and tender love were still clearly mirrored in their 
hearts and minds. They loved to talk of her, of 
what she had done and might be doing, of her 
sadness and loneliness, and of the joy that would 
be hers when they returned. Yet it is probable 
that they would have deferred any attempt to 
carry out this haunting vision for so long that 
they would have lost all desire to carry it out, 
but for an occurrence that looked on the surface 
like a mere accident. Juan and Casteel, who had 
never been friends, got into a violent quarrel one 
day, about some game that the former had shot 
and the latter had seized. It ended in Juan's get- 
ting a beating, and on his complaining to Sha- 
neco of his wrongs, he received neither redress nor 
satisfaction. 

This fanned the boy's latent discontent into 
flame. Infuriated by Casteel's taunts and cruelty, 
and by the apparent indifference of Shaneco, — - 
whose only intention was to make his ward duly 
submissive to his elders, and to maintain tribal 
discipline, — Juan lay awake all that night, indulg- 
ing in the most furious and revengeful thoughts, 
and trying to make plans for punishing his enemy. 
But with the morning light came enough sober- 
ness to show him the folly of pitting himself against 
Casteel. In the fit of disgust that followed, the 
memory of his mother's affection and indulgence 
naturally came back to him with redoubled force, 
and he determined to make another effort to escape 
from the Comanches as soon as possible. 

Having made this resolve, he was eager to com- 
municate it to Juanita. She was overjoyed to hear 
it, and agreed to everything that he proposed. 
Innumerable conferences followed between them, 
and both began to prepare in earnest for the under- 
taking. 

" Oh, if we only had horses ! " she said to him 
one day when they had been discussing ways and 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 



21 7 



means. " We could gallop and gallop and gal- 
lop away so fast ! " 

"Horses! Nonsense!" said Juan, who knew 
die unerring certainty with which, should they 
make the attempt on horseback, their foes would 
take their trail, and in a few hours, at most, recap- 
ture them. " We must leave on foot and at night. 
I don't want horses, but I must have a bow, and I 
mean to get one, Nita. I have thought of a plan. 
You will see ! " 

In about a week, Juan's preparations were com- 
plete ; and seeking his sister one morning, he found 
her watching a game of hunt-the-slipper, which 
with certain variations and additions is extremely 
popular among the Indians, and is played by 
old and young. On this occasion two braves 
were absorbed in it, and there was a ring of inter- 
ested spectators looking on. Eight moccasins 
were spread out on the ground in front of a young 
warrior, who took a bullet in his right hand and 
passed it swiftly under the soles of the moccasins, 
above and around them, until he contrived to drop 
it into one, unperceived. His opponent was then 
required to guess where the bullet was. If he 
failed, he paid a forfeit ; if he succeeded, he gained 
the prize. Each had a pile of blankets, buffalo- 
robes, and other things beside him, and they had 
been playing for hours, while two old warriors 
squatted down near them rattling dried peas in a 
gourd, and keeping up a droning chant that was 
utterly hideous and discordant. When Juan 
joined the lookers-on, the situation was exciting, 
although no noisy demonstrations showed that the 
Indians felt it to be so. A very handsome Mexi- 
can blanket was the prize, and Casteel was taking 
a great deal of time to consider the important 
question that would decide whether it should be 
his or not. 

" Can't you see where it is? Where are your 
eyes, you bat ?" said Juan tauntingly, after a long 
silence. 

•' Where is it, my fox? Tell me that, and you 
can take this, the best blanket I have," Casteel 
scornfully replied, laying his hand on one that 
was partly visible under a buffalo-robe, and pull- 
ing it out into full view. 

" it is under the flap of the third moccasin," 
said Juan, whose quick eye had noticed a very 
slight bulge on the inside of that shoe. It was the 
one nearest to Casteel, and was skillfull}' chosen 
by his adversary on the principle that the best 
place to conceal anything is immediately under the 
nose of the person who is looking for it. Casteel 
gave a disdainful grunt ; and, on hearing it, Juan 
stooped down and drew forth the bullet, saying 
triumphantly : 

" Here it is ! Give me my blanket ! " 



The spectators shouted. Casteel drew his knife 
by way of reply, and the next moment Juan's knife 
also flashed in the sunlight. But this time Shaneco 
upheld Juan, and made Casteel yield the blanket 
in dispute to the boy, who seized Juanita by the 
arm and hurried her away to the woods. 

" I have a blanket now," he said to her joyously, 
when they were out of earshot, " and a flint and 
steel and some punk, to kindle our fires, and some 
fish-hooks and a little corn and a wallet of dried 
meat. I am all ready. What have you ? " 

For answer, Nita ran to a hollow stump, tore 
away eagerly the leaves that apparently filled it. 
and brought back a supply of dried meat that she 
had saved, together with some nuts and other 
things that Juan rejected. Then they had a long 
talk, in which it was settled that they should leave 
that night just before midnight, when the moon 
would be rising ; that Juan was to keep awake and 
give Nita the signal by laying his hand on her 
face ; and that, once out of the Indian encamp- 
ment, they would travel south-west until daylight, 
and then hide until night came again. 

" I have found out where Mexico is." said Juan. 
"I pretended to Mazo " (a playmate) "that I 
thought it was due north, and quarreled with him 
about it, and he told me not only the direction in 
which it lies, but a great deal beside that he has 
heard from the braves. Was n't that sharp of 
me? Don't you be frightened, Nita; I will take 
care of you. You can just go to sleep to-night, 
and I will call you when the time comes." 

The weather was warm and pleasant, and the 
Indians were sleeping in the open air without shel- 
ter of any kind, so that it was not a question of 
stealing away from Shaneco alone, but from all the 
tribe. When Juan and Nita lay down as usual, 
side by side, near their protector, they were so ex- 
cited that it seemed easy enough to stay awake any 
number of hours — all night, indeed. But when 
two hours had gone by, and the perfect stillness all 
around had soothed and overcome their restless 
anxiety, the healthy child-nature prevailed and little 
Nita's eyes would not stay open any longer ; soon 
her soft, regular breathing told Juan that she was 
fast asleep. 

He kept awake, however, a long time after this, 
listening to every sound, wondering if the people 
about him were awake or asleep, thinking impa- 
tiently that the moon would never rise. From this 
his thoughts wandered to the journey he was about 
to take, and to a thousand other things. Shaneco's 
huge figure became more and more indistinct, and 
a cricket chirped in Juan's very ear now without 
rousing him. He seemed to be wandering over a 
wide, wide plain ; he forded streams ; he was lost 
in the woods; he fled from the Indians, who were on 



218 



JUAN AND JUAN IT A. 



[January, 



his trail, whose wild yell sent him up into a sitting 

position. In short, he, too, had slept; and 

when he could collect his senses, he 

found that the yell of his troubled 

dream came from an owl 

that had perched in 

the tree above him 

a nd had given him 

the friendly 

warning he 

needed 



#r. 




" 'do you see that large, BEAUTIFUL STAR? SAID JUAN 

so much. He was about to get up, knowing that 
there was no time to be lost, when the voices of 
two or three Indians reached him and warned him 
to be cautious. They were talking and jesting 
about the owl, and it was quite half an hour before 
all was quiet again. Another time, just as he was 
thinking of starting, old Shaneco turned over, 
and another interval of impatient waiting had to 
be endured. 



~":T;,)i At last it seemed to 

,,.-: .': -• Juan that the moment for 
-. :-C , departure had come. He 
'■'•;. 7~ '. ;: had no difficulty with 
Mt' Juanita, for the owl had 

; . aroused her, too, and she was 

'■■ ■ , wide awake, waiting in fear and 
: trembling for the signal agreed 
upon. Juan gently pressed her 
hand. They both sat up and looked 
about them. The camp was as quiet 
as the grave. Only the south wind 
gently rustled in the tree-tops, and carried 
a few dead leaves around in a miniature 
whirlwind, a few feet away. Every creat- 
ure about them was wrapped in profound 
'M sleep. After some moments of keen scru- 

tiny of the dark forms dimly visible on all 
sides, Juan looked at Nita and pointed to 
the east, where the stars were paling and a 
faint, green flush admonished him to be off 
before a flood of golden light was poured over 
every part of the valley. They quietly arose. 
Juan stepped lightly to the old chief's head, 
stretched out his hand, and took down the 
ong-coveted bow and quiver. At last it was 
his ! According to the Comanche code, he 
was doing nothing disgraceful ; on the con- 
trary, he was behaving in a very creditable 
' manner. Nevertheless, Juan's naturally 
generous and affectionate nature made him 
feel some compunction when he glanced 
down at the unconscious Shaneco, and 
remembered that the old brave had always 
been kind to him. But a bow he must 
have, and what a beauty this one was, to 
be sure ! As he was about to move away 
with it, a lizard that had crept into the 
quiver jumped down and scampered off 
across the grass. Shaneco muttered in 
his sleep, turned over on his back, and 
threw one arm up over his head. Juan 
was terribly frightened, but he had the 
presence of mind not to move or make 
any exclamation. He kept perfectly still 
and held his breath, but his heart beat so 
loudly that he thought it must betray 
him. As for Juanita, she shook like an 
aspen-leaf; but she did not cry out, nor run away. 
After a moment, Juan stepped noiselessly back 
again. Seeing his own bow and quiver at his feet, 
he picked them up and gave them to Juanita, who 
slung the bow around her neck. Then he seized 
his wallet, and picked his way carefully between the 
sleeping warriors that surrounded them. Juanita 
followed closely, and when they were nearly out of 
camp, he took her cold little hand in his to re-assure 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 



219 



her. Just then a warrior coughed, and both started 
as though they had been shot. But nothing came 
of it, and they were soon skirting the wood where 
all their councils of war had been held, taking 
advantage of the dark shadows it cast in some 
places, and noticing with alarm that the tops only 
of the trees were now glistening in the moonlight, 
which meant that it was very late and that they 
must make all possible haste. 

As they scurried along in the uncertain light, 
they fully realized that they had deliberately defied 
one of the most warlike and merciless tribes that 
this continent has ever held in all its length and 
breadth ; and as Juanita looked back fearfully 
over her shoulder from time to time, she imagined 
that she saw pursuers in every bush and tree, and 
even urged Juan to go back before their flight was 
discovered. 

But, once outside the camp, his courage had 
risen, and he stoutly refused to do anything of the 
kind. He took his bearings by the stars, and 
resolutely set his face toward Mexico, talking as 
boldly and cheerfully as he could all the while. 

" Do you see that large, beautiful star in front 
of you, Nita? " he said. " We shall always travel 
toward it, for that way lies our home. Our mother 
is there waiting for us, and we must go to her, no 
matter how far it is, or how many moons it will 
take us to get there. Are you still trembling? 
You must n't be such a coward. We have a good 
start, and by the time the Indians find out that we 
have escaped, we shall be far, far away, and they 
will not overtake us. And if they do, I will not 
let them hurt you." 

Juanita was not particularly re-assured, but she 
said nothing, and they walked on rapidly in silence 
for some time. The wind blew deliriously fresh, and 
full in their faces ; the moon had slowly died out 
of the clear heavens, and in the east the light had 
deepened, gradually, until all the sky was a miracle 
of beauty. Yet, if the fugitives looked often toward 
the sunrise, it was with no appreciation of its ex- 
quisite tints of rose and gold, but because the day 
of probable discovery and recapture seemed to 
be coming all too fast. They had been traveling 
about an hour, and, urged by love and fear alike, 
had put considerable distance between themselves 
and the camp, and Juanita was even beginning to 
feel hopeful, when suddenly they heard a dog bark. 
It sounded so near that they thought the Indians 
were already upon them, and. in a dreadful fright, 
took to their heels and ran like lapwings for a time, 
until, indeed, from sheer exhaustion they were 
obliged to stop. But even in this race for life, Juan 
remembered one of old Shaneco's lessons, and, 
whenever he could do so, chose the dry, rocky 
bed of a creek for his path, in order that their trail 



might be lost, or only found with great difficulty, 
after much loss of time. 

At last, panting and quite spent, they stopped 
to get their breath, encouraged by the thought 
that they had outrun or baffled their pursuers. As 
soon as possible, Juan pushed on to a range of low 
hills, from one of which he began to reconnoiter 
his position. He saw in the distance a valley- 
through which ran two dark lines made bv live- 
oak and elm trees. The one that led off to the 
south followed the course of a large creek which 
he knew lay in his way, and for which he had been 
on the lookout ; so he cheerily explained to Nita 
that he knew exactly where he was, and that he 
should make a bee-line for the creek, and there 
they could rest and hide themselves until the fol- 
lowing night. 

Very soon after this, they came upon a small 
water-course, and had not to wait for a drink until 
they got to the larger one, for they had followed 
its dry bed but a short distance when they spied a 
deep water-hole. Eager to quench their thirst, 
they raced up to it, stooped down, and began to 
drink, but were again startled by a loud barking 
and howling, and other strange noises, so close to 
them that all their terrors were renewed for a mo- 
ment. The next instant, Juan recognized the 
howling of a gang of coyotes, which was answered 
by a loud chorus of gobbles from a number of 
turkeys roosting in the trees above the water. 
Great was their relief; yet these sounds, sure in- 
dications of the approach of day, reminded them 
that they must press on. The imperative neces- 
sity of finding some hiding-place forbade their 
resting, and they hurried along the bed of the 
stream, walking altogether on the stones, until 
they came to the place where it intersected the main 
creek, into which they turned. The coyote concert 
still continued, and to the turkey chorus was rap- 
idly added other sounds, such as the hooting of 
owls, the twitter of song-birds, and the chirp of in- 
sects. Possessed more and more by fear of their 
pursuers, as the sun rose higher and higher, the 
children ran on with all their speed, glancing to 
the right and left as they went, to see if they could 
find a place that seemed likely to shelter them — 
two desperate, hunted little creatures. 

Finally, Juan came to a spot where a little brook 
emptied into the main creek, and there, a few hun- 
dred yards distant, was an immense oak-tree in full 
leaf, its friendly limbs stretching out far and wide 
and dropping low, as if eager to offer them an asy- 
lum. Juan had never heard of the royal fugitive 
who once fled to the heart of an oak for shelter, 
but he had often hidden in one for amusement ; 
and he now turned into the brook, ran up the 
bank, clambered upon the lowest limb, gave Nita 



220 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 



[January, 



of a coy- 
ote. They 
were very 
tired, but 
did not dare 
o to sleep. 
While thus 
£._ concealed, awaiting further 
developments, they had the 
novel pleasure of assisting 
at a concert to which no one is 
ever invited, and which a hunter 
may consider himself lucky to attend once or 
twice in a lifetime. This was one of the coyote 
symphonies of which I have spoken, and a droll per- 
formance it was, although conducted with great for- 
mality and deliberation. About twenty wolves, which 
constituted the troupe, grouped themselves on the sward 
beneath the tree. When the proper time came, their 
leader gave out one low, sad note, as if to command 
attention, very much as the conductor of an orchestra 
raises his baton and looks about at the musicians under his 
authority. At once the other wolves, all facing the leader, 
gathered around him in a circle. Then one wolf opened with a 
tenor howl of piercing quality, he was joined in regular succes- 
sion by the basso, contralto, soprano, alto, baritone, and so on 
until the whole pack was in full cry, every performer apparently 
giving his whole mind to his own score, and all keeping 




JUAN AND JUANITA ARE SERENADED 
BY COYOTES. 



his hand to help her up, and was 
soon ensconced in a fork or, rather, 
juncture, of several large limbs 
with the trunk. This spot he 
made more comfortable by wrench- 
ing off some branches and small 
dead limbs, and improvising a sort 
of rustic sofa. Now, at last, com- 
pletely concealed as they knew 
themselves to be by the dense 
foliage, they could draw a long 
breath in comparative safety. Only 
comparative safety, for the fugi- 
tives knew that the wonderfully 
trained sight of their enemies would 
soon find some clew as to the direc- 
tion of their flight, and that they 
would be tracked with all the cun- 
ning and the almost supernatural 
sagacity in woodcraft which the Indians possess. 
They strained their eyes and ears for a long 
while after this, looking and listening, but saw 
nothing, and heard only the gentle sighing of the 
leaves about them, the gobble of a turkey, the howl 




time by jumping up and down on their forefeet, 
with their noses lifted high in the air. These 
were familiar strains to Juan and Juanita ; but 
it was one thing to hear them while safe in an 
Indian camp, and quite another, when out alone 



87-] 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 



221 



in the woods. Nita grew pale when she heard 
the unearthly, long-drawn howls of the wolves 
below her, answered by a prolonged, wailing 
note from a lonely old coyote in the distance, and 
shrank close to her brother's side. But they soon 
had the satisfaction of seeing the pack slink off, 
after finishing the programme for the occasion. 

And now the wearisome excitement that Juan 
and Juanita had undergone began to make itself 
felt. The relaxation of the moment, their weari- 
ness, the murmur of the leaves about them, all 
combined to make them drowsy, and finally both 
fell asleep. They were awakened by a well-known 
voice that filled them with dread, and made them 
certain that they had been followed and their hid- 
ing-place discovered. And so it had been ; but 
by a dear and faithful friend instead of a cruel 
enemy — in short, by Amigo ! Missing them in 
the early dawn, he had taken their trail unobserved 
by the Indians, and had unerringly followed them 
to the foot of the oak. Puzzled by the sudden end 
of the trail, he began to whine, and gave a few 
short barks and a great fright to the children. He 
knew that they could not be far off, but where ? 
As for them, when they found that he had organ- 
ized an independent search of his own, they were 
delighted; for they had been feeling very lonely 
and desolate, and that honest, loving face was a 
cordial to their hearts, and seemed to bring them 
fresh hope and strength. The next moment came 
the thought that if he were to begin barking again, 
it would certainly attract the attention of the In- 
dians, if any were in the neighborhood. Juan 
parted the leaves, looked down, and spoke to 
Amigo in a low, stern voice ; and if ever a dog 
laughed, from Mother Hubbard's time until now, 
Amigo laughed when he saw those two faces — for 
Nita, too, peeped out. 

" It will not do to stay here now," said Juan. 
"We must leave this at once. Amigo would be- 
tray us, and they would look first along the prin- 
cipal water-courses. We must go over to that 
ridge." 

So saying, he dropped to the ground, followed 
by Nita. They could hardly control Amigo's joy 
at seeing them again on solid earth, but Juan 
quieted him. and the trio started off briskly for the 
high land, which they soon gained, and from which 
they had an extensive view. Long and anxiously 
did they gaze across the plain to see if they could 
discover any signs of pursuers. For a long while 
they saw none, and rejoiced accordingly; but at 
last Juan's sharp eyes made out some moving ob- 
jects on the distant hills — mere specks. 

" Buffalo, wild cattle, or Indians," he said, put- 
ting the worst supposition last in mercy to Nita, 
whose teeth were chattering already in a nervous 



chill. " We must put some thickets between us 
and them. Come on ! ". And starting off on a 
run, Juan fairly flew over the ground. Nita kept 
up with him for some time, and Amigo frisked 
cheerfully ahead as if out on a pleasure excursion ; 
but the little girl gave out at last, and stopping 
short, she burst into tears, exclaiming piteously : 

" Oh, we shall be taken ! We shall be killed ! 
Oh, why did we ever run away ? " 

Impatient as Juan was to go on, he too stopped, 
and did his best to console and encourage his 
sister ; and his kindness and affection had a great 
effect upon her. The sun was now high in the 
heavens; its heat added another distressing ele- 
ment to their flight, and they were, moreover, suf- 
fering from hunger and thirst. 

" There, there ! don't cry, Hermanita mia ! " 
said Juan. " A few minutes wont matter. We will 
just stop and get our dinner, and then we shall be 
able to travel for hours again. This way ! " 

So saying, he turned off to the right and made 
for the creek again. 

The season had been a very dry one, and he 
knew there was no water to be had except in the 
large streams, and there only in standing-pools, 
that were either fed by springs from below or 
were too deep to be affected by droughts. A cool 
drink is always to be had from them, if you un- 
derstand how to get it ; for even when the water 
on the surface is so hot as to be sickening, it is 
possible to bring up a deliciously cold draught, 
by putting a canteen on a long pole and running 
it down quickly to the bottom, where the sun's rays 
can not penetrate. The Indians use vessels made 
from the skins of wild animals for carrying water 
oil, and honey ; and nature has provided them with 
an admirable substitute for canteens in the Mexi- 
can gourd with its two globes connected by a long, 
narrow neck. It is a curious fact that this gourd 
is found only in the countries where it is most 
needed. In the absence of either gourd or can- 
teen, our runaways had recourse to mother-wit. 
Juan approached the water very carefully, avoiding 
the sand and all other places where his footprints 
could betray him : and kneeling down by a deep, 
still pool, he fell to running his hands down into it 
as far as possible, and throwing the water up 
toward the top, thus creating a current from the 
bottom, that soon gave them a fairly cool and re- 
freshing drink. He had taken pains not to spill 
any water, and had carried Amigo in his arms over 
patches of ground where the marks of feet might 
put the Comanches on their track. When they all 
had fully slaked their thirst, Juan led his little band 
on up the bed of the creek, intending to take them 
back to the hills again and let them rest a little and 
eat something. They did not move a moment too 



' My little sister." 



222 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 



[Januahy, 



soon. They had only passed the main trail that 
ran up and down the creek a short distance, when 
they heard the sound of horses' feet, and, soon after, 
voices. Now, indeed, they knew that they were in 
great peril, for they had been told that if they ever 
attempted to escape again, and were captured, they 
would be killed. Juanita 
fell into an ague at this 
crisis, but managed to 
keep up with Juan, who 
darted on up the creek, 
panting out at intervals, 
" We must be out of 
sight before they get to 
the crossing." They had 
scarcely reached a hid- 
ing-place before the In- 
dians rode down into the 
bed of the creek. There 
were fifteen of them, all 
armed with bows and 
arrows and lances. They 
were about four hundred 
yards away, and, as Juan 
could see, had stopped, 
either to hold a council, 
orbecause they had made 
some discoveries. 

The Indians soon de- 
termined what course to 
pursue. Eight of them 
rode up the bank ; four 
rode down the creek ; and 
how Juan's heart leaped 
into his mouth when he 
saw the other three turn 
their horses' heads up 
the creek, with Casteel's 
painted, hateful face com- 
ing first ! Fortunately, 
Juan was not only a cour- 
ageous lad, but he had 
the peculiar order of 
bravery that grows cooler 
and more collected in 
time of great danger, and 
is full of inspiration and 
expedient. 

He did not lose his head 
in the least. Nita had fallen on her knees and was 
repeating, under her breath, such prayers as came 
to her. Amigo was crouched down beside her and 
seemed to understand the gravity of the situation 
and Juan's sternly whispered command to be quiet. 
Juan, as he peeped between the bushes, was a living 
incarnation of two senses, sight and hearing. They 
had been so hard pressed that they had sheltered 



themselves behind the first clump of bushes they 
could find; but Juan knew that they were only 
partly hidden, and only safe until the Indians 
turned the bend of the creek and came in full 
view of their covert ; then Casteel's keen eyes 
would be sure to penetrate the scattering foliage 




KNEW THEY WERE ONLY PARTLY HIDDEN, AND ONLY SAFE UNTIL THE INDIANS 
TURNED THE BEND OF THE CREEK." 

that intervened. Desperate maladies require des- 
perate treatment. Juan gave a swift glance to 
right and left, saw that the curve of the bend was 
a long one, told by the sound that the Indians 
were walking their horses, and took a bold reso- 
lution. 

" Come ! " he said suddenly to Nita; and to her 
terror and amazement, ran out of his hiding-place 



i8s 7 .; 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 



223 



and sprang again into the bed of the stream, it 
seemed to her, in the very teeth of their pursuers ! 
Whatever noise they made was drowned by that 
of the horses' feet, and the banks of the stream 
were high enough to hide them from sight. On 
they sped. Juan knew that a break in the bank, 
a trampled weed, a stone freshly displaced, a foot- 
print, the slightest appearance of anything unu- 
sual would be detected, and that detection meant 
death. But he did not lose his self-possession for 
an instant. Luckily, the rock beneath his feet 
told no tales, though it echoed and re-echoed the 
tramping of the horses in a way so alarming 
that it seemed to Nita's excited imagination as if 
they must be ridden down any moment. At last, 
Juan saw with joy what he wanted, and instantly 
took advantage of it. It was an old tree that had 
probably been undermined by some freshet and 
was now lying prostrate. Upon this trunk he ran 
like a squirrel to the top of the bank. Nita followed, 
and dear, good Amigo did not let so much as one 
paw touch the earth. The three disappeared in 
the undergrowth beyond, leaving not a trace be- 
hind, just as the Indians made the turn that 
would have proved fatal to the fugitives. Obey- 
ing a natural impulse, the children ran swiftly 
away from the creek for a few minutes, and then 
Juan caught Nita's arm and bade her stop. She 
was glad to do so, for she was utterly spent and 
terrified nearly out of her wits. 

" It wont do to leave the river-bottom ; we may 

(To ie 1 



run upon the other party if we try to gain the post- 
oak woods," said Juan. " We must keep still 
awhile and let Casteel's party go on." 

Gradually the sound of horses' feet died away. 
The children had become a little composed and a 
little rested after their race for life. They began 
to hope they were safe, and Nita's face had lost 
its ashy look, when all their fears were revived 
by a loud yell from the Indians who had ridden 
down to the mouth of the creek and had discov- 
ered some trilling proof that the children had 
been there. 

Casteel's party heard this yell, and, turning, gal- 
loped back to join them. Juan knew that they all 
would soon be working at the trail together like so 
many bloodhounds, but that, thanks to his precau- 
tions, it would take them some little time to find it. 
He stooped and laid his ear to the earth. The 
instant Casteel passed by, he rose. " Now, quick ! " 
he said to Nita, and swift as an arrow from his own 
bow, he shot off in the opposite direction with his 
little company close behind him, and they did not 
stop until they had put five or six miles between 
them and their pursuers. 

•' Look at the shadows. It lacks only an hour of 
sunset," Juan said joyfully on starting. At first he 
kept in the river-bottom ; but when the twilight 
came, he struck across the open country and gained 
the woods, into which he and Nita plunged with 
inexpressible thankfulness, and, again climbing into 
an oak, were quite lost to sight. 
wtznued.) 



ml j&W^M) SSI fc 




We are tenors who sing in the chorus 
B-flat is the next note before us. 
We hope for the best, 
But it must be confessed 
That B-flat will be likely to floor us. 




224 



AN IDYL OF THE KING. 



[January, 











\ ( 1 S8(7bC J HBl i" m * 






W 



I- 













v^3 



fc^N 






fc5 



The carpet in the parlor is no better than the floor; 
Of the carpet in the library one can say little more; 
There's a good one in the dining-room, although it's 

rather small j 
But the carpet in the nursery is nicest of them all, 

There's a palace in the middle, circled with a wall of 
black. 

With a moat of yellow water, four browtj pathways run- 
ning back 

Through a fearful, frightful forest from the windows to 
the door, 

'Round four lakes of deep dark water with green griffins 
on the shore. 

At the corners there are castles, and in one King Arthur 

reigns ; 
In the north oije is a giant, and the south is Charlemagne's. 
But the castle in the corner by the closet is the best, 
And frorn this I rule my kingdom and reign over all the 

rest. 



I88 7 .j 



AN IDYL OF THE KING. 



225 



But the middle park and palace are a very wondrous place, — 
Statues, vases, fairies, graces, flowers and bowers through 

all the space, 
' T is a garden of enchantment, and the dreadful ogress there 
Is my sister — You should see her when she rumples up 

her Ijairl 

Now, it 's very, very seldonj that 1 '11 play with dolls and 

girls, 
J Cause I used to go ir; dresses, with my hair like Mary's 

curls : 
But there's first-rate fun in playing, on a rainy, indoor day, 
That her doll's a captive priijcess, to be rescued in a fray, 



/^ns^f-^ 



So with Knights of the Round Table and with Paladins 
France, 



Charlemagne and 1 and Arthur through the wicked wood Mjfi^V i'g<ap'-^ 



advance ; 
And we always have such contests, before all these wilds 

are crossed. 
With the giant and the griffins, that half our knights 

are lost. 

But at last we reach the portals, aijd the lovely princess see. 
Then the ogress, with her rnagic, captures every one but me 1 
Atjd transformed to wood and pewter in her duijgeons they 

repine, — 
But 1 bear away the priijcess, so the victory is mine. 




iHHis 







Vol. XIV.— 15. 



226 



TEX T I M E S ONE IS T E N . 



[January, 



TEX TIMES ONE IS TEN. 
By Alice Wellington Rollins. 



There has come to St. Nicholas a letter so 
helpfully suggestive with hints in a good cause, 
that the editor has asked me to add to it a few com- 
ments and explanations. I give the letter first : 

Dear St. Nicholas: I want to tell you of a 
society which I and some of my schoolmates joined 
last winter, and which, I think, many girls would 
like to join if they knew about it. It is "called 
" The King's Daughters," and the object is to 
help one's self and others to correct faults or to 
do kindnesses. It is a society of tens, every ten 
forming a Chapter. Each Chapter has a presi- 
dent, who conducts the meetings, and any mem- 
ber can start another Chapter. 

Each Chapter selects its own object, and meets 
at specified times to consult and report its prog- 
ress. For instance, we decided in ours that we 
would try not to say disagreeable things about 
people ; and when we met. we read whatever we 
thought would help us to correct this fault, and if 
any one had any suggestions to make about the 
management of the tens, she made it then. A 
Chapter often has a secretary and treasurer, if its 
object requires such officers. After a while, if the 
tens wish, they can break up and form new ones. 
The motto of the Society is " In His Name," and 
there is a badge of narrow purple ribbon and a 
small silver cross engraved with I. H. X. 

The Society started in New York, where I live, 
and I should be very glad to tell any of your girls 
more about it, if they care to hear. 

Your faithful reader, C. C. STIMSON. 

After all, the letter seems complete in itself, for 
it is a beautiful feature in the work of " The King's 
Daughters," that all the detail can be left for each 
Chapter to work out for itself, as it adapts its aims 
and efforts to the circumstances of its surround- 
ings. Nothing need prevent any girl from being 
a "King's Daughter" if she wishes to be one. 
You can not be so poor but that you may find a 
chance to help some one poorer than yourself, 
or so rich but that, with all you may be giving, 
there may be still some wider opportunity wait- 
ing for you. You can not live in any place so 
small that there is no one in it needing help, or in 
any place so large that, with all its homes and hos- 
pitals and charities, there are not yet hundreds 
of burdens to be lifted. And, by the helpfulness 
which any of us may try to show. I mean not 



only the charity which struggles to relieve absolute 
want and suffering, but the thoughtfulness which 
remembers to give a rose as well as to take away a 
thorn, to add to happiness as well as to satisfy 
hunger ; to send a concert ticket to some one who 
could not afford to buy one, as well as to send a 
soup-ticket to some one actually hungry ; to send 
a carriage for some poor invalid to have a drive 
who is not actually destitute, but only destitute of 
luxuries ; to see that poor children have not only 
bread, but toys — not only the work they need, 
but the pleasure they need. And if you are not 
rich enough to buy new toys, you can help more 
than you think by simply taking care that the 
books you have read and are done with, that the 
toys of which the children of your household have 
grown tired, are not packed away in closets or 
stowed out of sight on shelves or in trunks to wait 
for some possible time when you " may want 
them." Some people say that there is no particu- 
lar virtue in giving away what you don't want 
yourself; but to give away what you don't want 
yourself is much better than throwing it away ; for, 
however poor a thing it may seem to you, there 
is always somebody to whom it may appear won- 
derfully precious. 

Perhaps you will say, "But all this I do now; 
why should I join a society for doing these things, 
when I know now that I ought to do them, and 
that I like to do them, and dodo them?" 

The advantage of joining a society is that which 
comes from organization, provided it does not be- 
come so unwieldy as to destroy the feeling of per- 
sonal interest in the work. The fact that you live 
in the city or the country, in a little village or a 
large town, among rich people or poor, will, of 
course, modify your kind of work ; but work of 
some kind there will be for you everywhere, and 
everywhere it will be work that ten of you can do 
better together than separately. It is best not to 
have less than ten members in any Chapter, but 
the number need not be limited to ten ; although, 
as soon as there are twenty, it will be well to form 
anew Chapter, to keep the advantages of organi- 
zation without losing those of individuality and 
personal work. 

Another and very helpful result of joining such 
a society is the effort it may encourage you to make 
in the correction of individual faults. " The King's 
Daughters " will not forget, in trying to help others, 
how much help they need themselves, if not in ob- 



.8S 7 .] 



A K E A S O N FOR SMILING. 



227 



tabling the actual outward comforts or luxuries of 
life, at least in learning greater patience, sweet- 
ness, or courage. The letter tells how the girls 
belonging to one Chapter tried to correct them- 
selves of the fault of speaking hastily or disagree- 
ably of others ; and how they were helped in doing 
this not only by the constant reminder of the little 
badge they wore, but by coming together to read 
aloud any essay or poem or story that illustrated 
the necessity for correcting such a fault. Even 
the mere habit of exaggeration or high-flown 
speech is worth correcting, though it may not be 
a very terrible fault ; and, indeed, no slight failing 
can be too slight to need correction. 

Perhaps you may like to know something of the 
history of ''The King's Daughters." In January, 
1886, ten ladies met together to consider how they 
could give more help by uniting together than by 
each trying to work separately. They believed in 
the "Ten Times One is Ten" idea, and they called 
their band of ten "The King's Daughters," wish- 
ing to link together the ideas of work for humanity 
and of allegiance to God. They chose for their 
badge a little purple ribbon, to be worn either with 
or without the Maltese cross, and adopted Dr. Ed- 
ward Everett Hale's mottoes: 



Look up and not down. 
Look forward and not back. 
Look out and not in. 
Lend a hand. 

And because Our Saviour most perfectly lived 
these mottoes, they took for their watchword, 
•• In His Name." Each branch of the society 
consists of at least ten members, and the General 
Society includes all branches. In a little circular 
which they have published, they state that any- 
thing, however small or simple, that helps another 
human being to be better or happier, is proper work 
for "The King's Daughters," and every branch 
may, therefore, be left to choose its special work, 
according to its location and its circumstances. 
Frequent meetings of each ten are desirable in 
order to obtain suggestions from one another and 
secure unity of action. Whatever special work 
may be done, all branches have a common inter- 
est in increasing the number of tens. Each ten 
may organize and elect officers, though this is not 
essential in so small a body. Once having formed 
a Chapter, each ten must decide for itself what it will 
do, remembering that anything which makes any 
other human being happier or better is worth doing. 




A REASON FOR SMILING. 



By Emilik Poulsson. 



Bertha was a little maid 
Wrapped in blindness' awful shade ; 
Yet her face was all alight 
With a smile surpassing bright. 



Bertha, tell," I said one day. 
Why you look so glad and gay — 
Brimming full of happiness? 
What 's the joy? I can not guess! 



In a tone of wondering, 
Speaking thoughtfully and slow. 

" Why ! " said she, " I did n't know 
There had happened anything" — 
Here the laughter rippled out — 

" To be looking sad about ! " 



228 



WHEN GRANDPA WAS A LITTLE BOY. 



[January, 



randp 




By Malcolm Douglas. 



" WHEN Grandpa was a little boy about your age," said he 

To the curly-headed youngster who had climbed upon his knee, 

" So studious was he at school, he never failed to pass ; 

And out of three he always stood the second in his class " 

" But, if no more were in it, you were next to foot, like me ! " 

" Why, bless you, Grandpa never thought of that before," said he. 

" When Grandpa was a little boy about your age," said he, 

" He very seldom spent his pretty pennies foolishly; 

No toy or candy store was there for miles and miles about, 

And with his books straight home he 'd go the moment school was out " 

" But, if there had been one, you might have spent them all, like me ! " 

"Why, bless you, Grandpa never thought of that before," said he. 

" When Grandpa was a little boy about your age," said he, 
" He never staid up later than an hour after tea ; 
It was n't good for little boys at all, his mother said. 

And so, when it was early, she would march him off to bed " 

" But, if she had n't, maybe you 'd have staid up late, like me ! " 
" Why, bless you, Grandpa never thought of that before," said he. 

" When Grandpa was a little boy about your age," said he, 
" In summer he went barefoot and was happy as could be ; 

And all the neighbors 'round about agreed he was a lad 

Who was as good as he could be, except when he was bad " 

"But, 'ceptin' going barefoot, you were very much like me." 
"Why, bless you. Grandpa 's often thought of that before," said he. 



i88 7 .| 



THE BROWNIES IN THE TOY-SHOP 



229 



THE BROWNIES IN THE TOY-SHOP 



By Palmer Cox. 



As SHADES of evening settled down, 
The Brownies rambled through the town, 
To pry at this, to pause at that, 
By something else to hold a chat, 
And in their free and easy vein 
Express themselves in language plain. 
At length before a store, their eyes 
Were fixed with wonder and surprise 
On toys of wood, and wax, and tin, 
And toys of rubber piled within. 
Said one, " In all our wandering 'round, 
A sight like this we never found. 
When such a passing glimpse we gain. 




«##iiWi' 



What wonders must the shelves contain ! " 

Another said, "' It must be here 

Old Santa Claus comes every year 

To gather up his large supply, 

When Christmas Eve is drawing nigh, 

That children through the land may find 

They still are treasured in his mind." 

A third remarked, "Ere long, he may 

Again his yearly visit pay ; 

Before he comes to strip the place, 

We '11 rummage shelf, and box, and case, 

Until the building we explore 

From attic roof to basement floor, 

And prove what pleasure may be found 

In all the wonders stowed around." 

Not long were they content to view 

Through dusty panes those wonders new; 

And, in a manner quite their own, 

They made their way through wood and stone. 

And then surprises met the band, 

In odd conceits from every land. 

Well might the Brownies stand and stare 

At all the objects crowded there ! 



2 SO 



THE BROWNIES IX THE TOY -SHOP. 



[January, 







wn 



fck 







*§i If n« 
iiiylft I ^'^ 

,. /Sin • i ilJ)J..(. , u.'Y ^ 



^WW]7^7wniiiill 



Mii: iiiii 



CSJ/ill'n ■ 1.1,1,'riA ^"^ ^a- . 

J \ h X^M* 



T7' I, ,K* 



^ 



'Til! 








Here, things of gentle nature lay 
In safety, midst the beasts of prey ; 
The goose and fox, a friendly pair, 
Reposed beside the lamb and bear ; 
There horses stood for boys to ride; 
Here boats were waiting for the tide, 
While ships of war, with every sail 
Unfurled, were anchored to a nail; 
There soldiers stood in warlike bands ; 
And naked dolls held out their hands, 



As though to urge the passers by 
To take them from the public eye. 

To try the toys they soon began i 
To this they turned, to that they ran. 

The Jack-in-box, so quick and strong, 
With staring eyes and whiskers long, 
Now o'er and o'er was set and sprung 
Until the scalp was from it flung; 



i88 7 .] 



THE BROWNIES IN THE TOY-SHOP. 



231 



And then they crammed him in his case, 
With wig and night-cap in their place, 
To give some customer a start 
When next the jumper flew apart. 
The trumpets, drums, andweaponsbright 
Soon rilled them all with great delight. 
Like troops preparing for their foes, 
In single ranks and double rows, 
They learned the arts of war, as told 
By printed books and veterans old ; 
With swords of tin and guns of wood, 
They wheeled about, and marched or 

stood, 
And went through skirmish drill and al 
From room to room by bugle-call. 



,;,■■ |ij,.i n ,(,,,111 •' ... , ■ ,il! J ', ■■ ' , ,J . .. ; ,. i" 1 , !ij| 




PALMCP^ COX 



The music-box poured forth an air 
That charmed the dullest spirits there, 
Till, yielding to the pleasing sound, 
They joined to dance a lively round. 

The rocking-horse, that wildly rose, 
Now on its heels, now on its nose, 
Was forced to bear so great a load 
It seemed to founder on the road, 



Then tumble feebly to the floor, 
Never to lift a rocker more. 

Thus, through the place in greatest glee, 
They rattled 'round, the sights to see, 
Till stars began to dwindle down, 
And morning crept into the town. 
And then, with all the speed they knew, 
Away to forest shades they flew. 



232 



JAC K -I N-T HE-PULPIT. 



[January, 











JACK -IN- THE -PULPIT. 



Here comes the happy New Year, over a glis- 
tening pathway either of snow, or of dried leaves 
and twigs that crackle with the spirit of winter 
firesides — I can't quite say which it is, at this dis- 
tance. At all events, I 'm here, too — your same 
old Jack, and quite refreshed through the kindness 
of the clever young brother who, with such sweet 
gravity, occupied this pulpit last month. He is a 
rising young Jack, and will yet make himself 
heard, I am sure, in perhaps a wider pulpit than 
this — though (between ourselves) he will never 
address a more intelligent and worthy congrega- 
tion than mine, my beloved. 

And now, in view of 1SS7, here is an old verse 
that my friend Santa Claus said he wished he had 
put into all your Christmas stockings : 

Old Father Time to his children doth say : 
" Go on with your duties, my dears. 
On the right hand is work, on the left hand is play; 
See that you tarry with neither all day, 
But faithfully build up the years." 

Next we '11 take up another timely topic, as it 
relates to cold weather. The Little School-ma'am 
enlisted her scholars in a nice little competition 
not long ago. It was agreed that every boy and 
girl should bring to the school on a certain Friday 
afternoon the most interesting piece of informa- 
tion that he or she had read during the week, and 
a prize should be given to the one which was voted 
to be the most interesting item of the lot. Well, 
a fine time they had, to be sure, and I wish I could 
tell you of even half the curious facts those clever 
young searchers unearthed from old books and 
papers. But I can give you only the paragraph 
that won the prize. It was the following extract, 



copied by a little girl from one of her father's 
library volumes. She called it 

"A PLACE WHERE FIRE ALMOST GETS COLD.' 

"A person who has never been in the Polar 
regions can probably have no idea of what cold 
really is ; but, by reading the terrible experiences 
of Arctic travelers, some notion can be formed of 
the extreme cold that prevails there. When we 
have the temperature down to zero out-of-doors, 
we think it bitterly cold. Think, then, of living 
where the thermometer goes down to thirty-five 
degrees below zero in the house, in spite of the 
stove ! Of course, in such a case, the fur gar- 
ments are piled on until a man looks like a great 
bundle of skins. Dr. Moss, of the English Polar 
Expedition of 1875 and 1876, among other odd 
things, tells of the effect of cold on a waxed candle 
which he burned there. The temperature was 
thirty-five degrees below zero, and the doctor 
must have been considerably discouraged when, 
upon looking at his candle, he discovered that the 
flame had all it could do to keep warm ! It was so 
cold that the flame could not melt all the wax of 
the candle, but was forced to eat its way down in- 
side the wax, leaving a sort of outer skeleton of 
the candle standing. There was heat enough, 
however, to melt oddly-shaped holes in this thin, 
circular wall of wax, and the result was a beautiful 
lace-like cylinder of white, with a tongue of yellow 
flame burning inside it, and sending out into the 
darkness many streaks of light. This is not only 
a curious effect of extreme cold, but it shows how 
difficult it must be to find anything like warmth in 
a place where even fire itself almost gets cold." 

FINGERS AND THUMBS. 

The Little School-ma'am also sends you these 
verses, by Miss Margaret Yandegrift, who, she 
says, has written many admirable pieces for St. 
NICHOLAS, including " a tough little yarn " in this 
very number, called " The Galley Cat." 

I dont know much about fingers and thumbs 
myself, but I 'm sure, from what the little girl in 
the rhyme says, that arithmetic must be very 
puzzling. 

Her hands were spread before her. 

She was looking very wise ; 
For there was a little wrinkle 

Between her round blue eyes. 

And I heard her softly saying, 
" I don't see how they can, 
If Mamma is a lady, 

And Papa a gentleman ! 

" But Grandma joins in with them ; 
And though she 's never told, 
I should think she was three hundred — 
And may be more years old ! 

" Now, every single one of them 

— And, surely, each one knows ! — 



JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT. 



2 33 



Says: 'Yes, you have ten fingers,' 
And ' Yes, you have ten toes.' 

" The toes come right — I Ve counted; 
But when the fingers come, 
On each hand are four fingers, 
Four fingers and a thumb ! 

" Two fours are eight, — I 've counted, — 
It is n't one bit more ! 
And my thumbs are not my fingers, 
And one from five leaves four ! 

'" And I don't see why they say it, 
Nor how- they make it come, 
For a thumb is not a finger 
If a finger 's not a thumb." 

A SNAIL RACE. 

I 'M told that a foolish Frenchman, as a new- 
amusement for his idleness, has invented the sport 
of snail-racing. The course is a long, smooth 
board, at the end of which is a lighted candle. 
When the room is darkened the snails naturally 
begin to creep along the board toward the flame. 
To make the race more interesting, various obsta- 
cles are placed across the board, as shown in the 
picture, and the fastest snails, so to speak, are bur- 
dened with pellets of clay. 




CAUGHT BY A LOBSTER. 

I LIKE a laugh, and especially a young laugh, 
meaning the laughter of little folk. It is one 
with the blue sky, and the brook, and the clover's 
nodding, and the joyful life of birds — but some- 
times the children in my meadow laugh so heartily 
that, apart from liking the music of it, I have a 
natural Jack-in-the-pulpity desire to know what 
it 's all about, and the more I try to find out, the 
more I don't succeed. 

Now, as an instance ; the other day, Brother 
Green had a little crowd around him, and he was 
holding forth, as is his wont, in a morally funny 
way, on the subject of honest observation. "Look 
for yourselves," said he ; "learn what you can from 
good books, but study N ature more. Learn directly 
from her whenever you can, and when you write 
your composition for the dear Little School-ma'am, 
write what you know instead of repeating things 
that you have read in books. But there is a still 
closer application of the rule," he continued. 
"Not only write what you think you know, but 
be sure that you know what you know. If you do 
this you will not be apt to make such a mistake 
as the Frenchman did in the old story, when — " 

Here the Deacon paused, and two or three sleepy 
children became wide-awake. 

"When what, Deacon Green?" they asked. 

" Why," said the Deacon, looking slowly at one 
and another of his hearers — "why, when, in 
writing a book, he, the Frenchman, spoke of the 
lobster as 'the cardinal of tke sea.' " 

Ha! ha! ha! laughed the big boys. 

He ! he ! laughed the big girls. 

Ha ! ha, ha, he, he ! echoed the littler ones, but 
they looked puzzled. 

"Cardinals," explained the Deacon, "generally 
dress in the bright red, which is consequently 
known as cardinal red ; so you see the Frenchman 
called the lobster the — " 

"Oh, oh ! " exclaimed several of these little ones, 
showing their white teeth and laughing now in 
hearty earnest. 

"I see you understand," said the Deacon; 
and he went on with his talk. 



This sort of = \,.ji/ ', \ 
thing may do to - \ 

amuse a Frenchman 
whose time hangs ~^j| 
heavy on his hands ; but 
the best excuse for it that 
I 've heard is a verse, sup- 
posed to come from the snails them 
selves. Here it is : 

Our motto is "Fcsiina lente," 
And it 's better than ten out of twenty ; 
For the later you start, and the slower you go, 
The sooner you '11 learn who is beaten, you know ! 




234 



THE LETTER-BOX. 



[January, 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



Miss Frances E. Willard, whose work in life is to do good, to 
help the helpless, raise the fallen, and do battle against wrong, has 
just written a book that all the girls who are just budding into 
young womanhood may read thoughtfully. It is entitled, " How 
to Win," and is essentially a book for girls. It is advice on a high 
plane, and the spirit of the book can not but aid ambitious girls in 
their desire to become self-reliant and self-helpful. 

" Chivalric Days and the Boys and Girls who Helped to 
Make Them" is a new book for young people, written by E. S. 
Brooks, well known to the readers of St. Nicholas who, through 
him, have become acquainted with several interesting "'Historic 
Boys " and " Historic Girls." " Chivalric Days " tells some partic- 
ularly entertaining stories of certain other boys and girls of the long 
ago. It is published in most attractive style by Messrs. G. P. Put- 
nam's Sons, of New York, who brought out the volume of " Historic 
Boys " a year ago. 

" The Acorn " is a laudable little newspaper, published by one of 
the St. Nicholas boys, Edwin L. Turnbull, of 45 Lexington Street, 
Baltimore. He is editor, type-setter, proof-reader, and chief con- 
tributor, and the paper is a neat enough piece of workmanship to 
make even Phaeton Rogers envious. In this, however, it differs 
but little from many of the amateur newspapers of our land. The 
only reason why we give special mention to The Acorn and its thir- 
teen-year-old editor, is because of the spirit that prompts its issue. 
The young editor devotes all the proceeds from its publication, not 
to tricycles and unlimited candy, but to a worthy charity — the free 
kindergarten of the city of Baltimore. Kindly charity is a gracious 
thing to see in the young people of our happier homes, who, in the 



profusion of their own blessings, too often forget the less fortunate 
children of the street. So, success, says St. Nicholas, to Editor 
Turnbull ! Great oaks do sometimes from little acorns grow. 

There is no land more dramatic or picturesque in its history 
than is Germany — the land of Charlemagne and Otto and Henry 
the Black, of knights and crusaders, <j{ Hohenstaufens and Haps- 
burgs, of castles and free cities, of the Rhine, the Black Forest, the 
Hartz mountains, and all the fabled homes of gnome and goblin, 
sprite and fairy. Mrs. Charlotte Moschelles has collected, in a 
neat little volume called "Early German History," certain of the 
most important events in German annals, and has made a book 
for young people that they will find highly interesting, instructive, 
and entertaining. 



There are three well-known artists who are occasionally con- 
founded one with another on account of the curious similarity 
of their names, which nevertheless are spelled or pronounced 
differently. 

One of them is the English painter, John Everett Millais, whose 
picture, "The Princes in the Tower," is familiar to the readers of 
St. Nicholas, and whose name is pronounced as though spelled 
Millay. Another is the French peasant painter, Jean Francois 
Millet, of whom Ripley Hitchcock writes so charmingly in the 
present number of St. Nicholas, and whose name is pronounced 
like that of the English artist, despite the difference in spelling. 
The third, is the American artist, Frank D. Millet, who very sensi- 
bly, as many boys and girls will think, pronounces his name just 
the way he spells it. 



THE LETTER-BOX. 



Sydney, N. S. W., Australia. 

Dear St. Nicholas: My sister Emily and I are two New York 
school girls who left home in October last for Australia. We went 
overland to San Francisco, and from there sailed across the Pacific 
Ocean to Sydney. We stopped at Honolulu and one of the Naviga- 
tor Islands, also at Auckland, New Zealand, where we climbed up 
to the top of Mount Eden with Papa, and looked down into the 
mouth of the crater. The view from the top was lovely, but I can 
not tell you about it now. Papa says we may return home via 
the Suez Canal. I hope we may, for then we shall have had a trip 
around the world, sailing on the Pacific. Indian, and Atlantic Oceans 
and the Red and Mediterranean Seas. 

We get the St. Nicholas every month by the mail steamer, and 
I thought you might like to get a letter from here, telling you some- 
thing of the black aborigines, the native Australians. They have jet- 
black skin, and their hair is black and very bushy. _ They call their 
houses "humpys,"and their wives "gins." Their war arms are 
the boomerang and waddy. The boomerang is shaped like a cres- 
cent, and, if thrown properly, will return to the feet of the thrower. 
The waddy is like a club, made of very strong and heavy wood, and 
is sometimes ornamented with feathers and heavy old nails driven in 
around the top. Yours truly, Grace B . 



Colorado. 

Dear St. Nicholas : I am a little girl, nine years old. I live in 
Colorado, but in the summer-time 1 live on a ranch, and in winter 
I live in Colorado Springs. 

I have a little brother ; his age is seven years. We all went to a 
round-up yesterday. There were over a thousand cattle, all in a 
bunch, uut on the plains, and a lot of men on horseback were riding 
in among them and getting all of the same brands together, so they 
could be driven to the ranches, where they belong. It was very 
exciting to watch them. I should tliink it would tire the ponies verv 
much, for they ride so hard. Your little reader, M. H. C . 



Allegheny, Pa. 

Dear St. Nicholas : I do not believe you have any other five- 
year-old firemen among your readers, so, as I like Mamma to read 
what other little boys play, may be they would like to hear how I 
came to he a fireman. Near one of my grandpa's is an engine- 
house, said to be one of the finest in the country. The firemen like 
boys, and I often go to see them. I know all about how the alarms 
are rung and how the stall doors are opened by electricity. Once one 
of the firemen took me in his arms and slid down a pole with me, 
from the second to the first floor. I often see them going to fires, 
and I have seen them at a fir^. so I think I will be a fireman, too. 
When my aunties grew tired of having all their chairs turned into 
fire-engines, they bought me a toy fire department, just like a real 
one, and now I can play fire all day. My chief's buggy, hose-car- 
riage, and engine are of cast iron, and the hook and ladder of tin. 
When the gong sounds, the chief goes first, followed by the hose- 
carriage, and then the engine. The hook and ladder has to wait 
for a second alarm. All the horses can be unhitched, the engine and 
hook and ladder each having two, the buggy and hose reel but one. 
The ladders and firemen can be taken from their places, and the little 
rubber hose unwound from the reel. 

I have plenty of other toys, but next to my fire department I like 
my bisque animaL, families of rabbits, bears, lions, and monkeys, 
and my two gum pug dogs. 

But best of all is when Mamma takes me on her lap and reads to 
me; and of all my books, St. Nicholas is the nicest. 

Yours truly, Willie. 



Havre, France. 

My Dear St. Nicholas: I have never seen anv letter from 

Havre, so I thought I would write. I am an English girl, aged 

twelve, and I have four brothers and five sisters, so that, altogether, 

we are ten children, which is a fair quantity. There are two pairs 



T HE LETTER-BOX, 



of twins in our family, the eldest, a boy and a girl called Noel and 
Noelle, are five years old ; and the youngest, Mildred and Muriel, 
two girls, are two. 

I like your magazine very much. 

Here we see those great transatlantic steamers going in and out 
of the harbor. We live quite close to the sea, so we get a very good 
view of the passing ships. They have just built a beautiful broad 
boulevard here, and they are thinking of building a harbor which 
will run far out into the sea. The boulevard is called the " Boule- 
vard Maritime," because it runs along the edge of the sea. 

Your very interested reader, Winifred S . 



Toronto, Ont. 
Dear St. Nicholas : Last summer we went to Roaches Point. 
on Lake Simcoe, for the holidays. One evening, just after tea, tny 
cousin and another boy and I went out trawling. I was trawling, 
when I felt a pull. I told my cousin to stop rowing, because I was 
on a log, but the other boy that was with us said, " No, you are not ; 
you have got a fish." " So I have," I said, and I told my cousin to row 
to the shore, for I knew it was a very large one, and if we had not 
taken it into shallow water, we could not have landed it- We pulled 
it in to the side of the boat, and were just going to catch hold of it 
and hoist it in, when it gave a great kick and ran off ajrain ; but it 
was n't off the hook ; we pulled it in again. One of the boys held 
the line and the other took the fish round the body and lifted it 
in. We then went home and weighed it ; it was twenty-one pounds ; 
its length was three feet eight inches. It was the largest muskalonge 
caught in Lake Simcoe in i836. I am eleven years old. 

Gordon O . 

New York Citv. 
Dear Old St. Nick: I am so very fond of you that I thought I 
ought to write to tell you so, although there is no need of saying so, 
for I know all your readers must love you very much. I have been 
spending the summer in the North, but my home is in Savannah. 
Ga. I have n't seen many letters from your Southern readers, so I 



thought I would write to tell you that your Southern friends think 
just as much of you as those in the North. 1 have been taking you 
for five years, and like you better every year. I enjoyed "Little 
Lord Fauntleroy" very much, and hope that "Juan and Juanita" 
will be as interesting. 

I remain your constant reader, Ida B. H , 13 years. 



Edinburgh, Scotland. 
My Dear St. Nicholas: We have a lot of pets ; they are very 
nice. The kittens purr, the birds whistle, and the dogs wag their 
tails when they are happy. The dogs growl, and the cats wag their 
tails and puff when they are angry. I send you a card in case it 
is your birthday. I am your loving Sophie D . 



We wish to acknowledge with thanks pleasant letters from the 
young friends whose names follow. We are sorry that there is 
not space for their letters. Annie, " Minnehaha," Mary L. Evans, 
Punch Millar, Jamie Gregg, " Yes and No," Mabel and Annie 
Reynolds, Anna B., Isabella B., Hortie O'M., Coralie M., Irvin 
Bair, Wm. N. Colton, Faith Bradford, Mary R. Hardy, Winnie B. 
B., M. E., Mary K. Hadley, K. L. L., Lilyan S. Anderson, Blanche 
A. W. , Annie Hitchcock, Raymond V. Ingersoll, Mamie L. , Del 
Webb, H. L. M., Harrington G, Hall, Katharine Maury, Clarence 
E. C., Helen Thompson, Walter Cohen, Josie Mughan, Alfred M. S., 
Joel W. Reynolds, Charles Weed, Daisy P. Hougue, Elsie Rooth, 
Belle Harper, Bennie Castle, V. J., Margery C, Annie Griswold, 
Alva P., "Ramona," T. Cheshire Shipley, Edith Puffer, Henry 
Remser and Willie Darrach, M. G. Holland, Charles F. Lester, J. 
Roberts, Charlie S. Miles, Camilla S., J. F. O., Beatrice G., Mollie 
Orr, Mary H. B., Barry, Gertie N., " Evelyn," " Hector," Katha- 
rine Seon, Reno Blackstone, Maude S., and Alice Hutchings. 



ANSWERED RIDDLE JINGLE. 




2.^6 



A WORD TO OUR READERS. 



[January, 



A WORD TO OUR READERS. 



YOU all know, good readers, how natural it is for us 
young folk, when we are playing games in our own 
yards or gardens, to feel that the boys and girls who are 
playing on the other side of the fence are having a much 
better time than we. And you know, too, how apt we 
are, in such a case, to wish ourselves over upon their 
grounds for a while. 

An experience not unlike this may possibly occur now 
and then with us St. Nicholas folk. In these days, for 
instance, we are having a right good time, we know ; but 
next door, just over the fence, something is going on at 
present that — well, the sooner we all go and see about 
it, the better. 

Inother words, Thk Century Magazine is now telling 
its grown-up readers a wonderful story, which should be 
read also by every bov and girl old enough to understand 
it. It is the story of the life of Abraham Lincoln, the 
great President of our country during the most thrilling 
and momentous epoch of its history. And it is told by 
Mr. John G. Nicolay and Ccl. John Hay, who were his 



private secretaries while he was in the White House, and 
who have spent nearly a score of years in preparing this 
authentic and masterly account of Lincoln's life. The 
interest begins with the very opening chapters, which tell 
how his grandfather settled in Kentucky with that famous 
hunter, Daniel Boone, and was killed by Indians; and 
how Abraham Lincoln himself, when a boy, was rescued 
by another lad from drowning; and what struggles and 
privations he endured ; and what a rough-and-ready life 
befel him as a youth ; and how through it all he displayed 
the same sturdy purpose and integrity and sure wisdom 
that, later on, did so much to save the nation. 

But this is only a glimpse over the hedge. If you are 
wise, you will gain for yourselves the advantages which 
your parents and older friends are enjoying, by becom- 
ing acquainted with this story of the life of Lincoln — 
already recognized as one of the most remarkable biog- 
raphies ever written. A history so great in its subject 
and scope, and so noble and clear in its style, can not fail 
to interest and inspire the young people of America. 



siB^siz^sso 




^ a-W — r - 

v.fcNOXlTASSl •— 



SIXTY-NINTH REPORT 




Special Notice to Members of the Agassiz 
Association - . 

As you already have been notified by a circular from 
your President, a well-known scientific journal has made 
a proposal to issue a special organ for the Agassiz Asso- 
ciation, to be known as " The Swiss Cross." Mr. H. H. 
Ballard will be the editor of the new publication, which 
will be devoted exclusively to the interests of the Agassiz 
Association, and will be sent to its members at the sub- 
scription price of one dollar a year. 

St. Nicholas, wishing well to the Agassiz Associa- 
tion, which it practically established, and which it has 
done much to maintain, now heartily advises your Presi- 
dent to accept this opportunity of transferring the reports 
to a purely scientific journal. They will there be given 
more space and prominence than can possibly be ac- 
corded to them in the crowded pages of St. Nicholas, 
which, of course, must be conducted with a view to the 
interests of the great majority of its readers. 

After friendly consultation between the editor of this 
magazine and the President of the Association, it has, 
therefore, been decided that the publication of the reports 



in the pages of St. Nicholas shall terminate with the 
present issue. 

We have only to add the assurance of our cordial in- 
terest in the Association and its progress, and to wish 
the Society a long life of usefulness and prosperity. 

Meantime, the change here announced implies no sep- 
aration between any members of the Agassiz Association 
and this magazine. The bond between St. Nicholas and 
its readers is, we trust, " non-transferable," and the mag- 
azine will, of course, continue to print articles and com- 
munications of interest and value to young students of 
Nature. Indeed, we already have on file many natural- 
history papers and contributions conveying scientific in- 
formation. Our pages, therefore, will not lack material of 
a character specially suited to members of the Agassiz As- 
sociation ; and we shall, with pleasure, print once or twice 
a year a communication from the President of the Associ- 
ation giving a general review of its progress and plans. 

Our thanks, and those of all the members of the Society, 
are due to Mr. Ballard for his energetic services in behalf 
of the Association, which have contributed so largely to 
its present flourishing condition. 

— Editor of St. Nicholas. 



THE AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION. 



2 37 



Perhaps no month in the history uf our Society has been more 
satisfactory in its general results than this. As appears from our reg- 
ister, seventeen new and reorganized Chapters have been added to our 
roll. More reports have come than can possibly be reproduced, and 
the general tenor of the reports and letters received has been most 
encouraging. We have now enrolled 984 Chapters, and by far the 
larger part of them are vigorously active. During the past year a 
much greater interest in our work has been manifested by parents 
and teachers than ever before. As a consequence, the average 
Chapter now organized is more firm in texture, has more thread to 
the inch, than the average Chapter of a year or two ago, and will 
consequently attain to a stronger growth and a mure permanent po- 
sition. 

Professor W. O. Crosby, of the Boston Society of Natural 
History, Boston, Mass., has volunteered to supplement the course 
of lessons in Elementary Mineralogy, given during the past year, 
by a course of instruction in 1 leterminative Mineralogy. It is pro- 
posed that this course, like the other, shall be freely open to every 
one, whether a member of the A. A. or not ; and all who desire to avail 
themselves of this opportunity may send their names at once to 
Professor Crosby. The course will be based upon Professor Crosby's 
recently published book, entitled "Tables for the Determination of 
Common Minerals, chiefly by their Physical Characters." Although 
the special object of this course will be instruction and practice in 
the determination of unknown minerals, it will also afford the 
student a valuable training in the observation and classification of 
minerals. It is not designed solely for those who have taken the 
first course, but may be profitably pursued by any persons feeling 
an interest in the subject, especially if they will study carefully the 
introduction to the tables, in which all the various properties of min- 
erals are clearly explained. 

The method of the determinations is somewhat similar to that of 
analytical botany ; and an effort will be made to show that common 
minerals may be identified with the same ease and accuracy as com- 
mon plants. Each applicant for the course will receive a copy of 
the book, a collectinn of twenty-five minerals, numbered, but not 
named, and a sufficient number ot blank reports. The specimens 
will be determined in the order of the numbers, and the reports for- 
warded in series of five to Professor Crosby — for correction. They 
will be stamped Right or JVrong, as the case maybe ; and, if wrong, 
the point will be indicated at which the student began to go wrong, 
so that the determination may be repeated and a second report for- 
warded. When all of the specimens have been correctly determined, 
a second collection of twenty-five specimens will be sent to those 
desiring it, and after that a third collection. Or, those having un- 
named specimens in their private cabinets may, when they have 
finished the first twenty-five specimens, determine these, sending a 
small numbered fragment in each case with the report. In this way 
students and Chapters will be able to name and classify their own 
collections of minerals, while making them the basis of a valuable 
training in mineralogy. It is important, however, that the deter- 
mination of miscellaneous specimens should be deferred until the 
first regular collection of twenty-five specimens has been faithfully 
worked out ; for these have been carefully selected to form an easy 
introduction to the use of the tables. The confirmatory chemical 
tests given in the last column of the tables will not be required in 
most cases. These are, however, of the simplest character, and the 
bluw-pipe, glass-tubes, and other simple apparatus which they re- 
quire will be sent to those desiring them. 

It will be observed that the plan of the course is such that mem- 
bers of the class may work rapidly or slowly, and as continuously as 
they desire ; since, while one series of reports is being corrected by 
Professor Crosby, a second series may be prepared. 

As an additional incentive to careful work, the following system 
of credits has been devised. If a mineral is reported correctly the 
first time, it will count one; if it is reported correctly the second 
time, it will count one-half; but if it is reported incorrectly the 
second time, Professor Crosby will give the correct name of the 
mineral, and the student's credit will be zero. A premium is thus 
offered for faithful, painstaking determinations, since the sum of 
the credits measures the quality rather than the number of the 
reports. 

To cover the cost of the book, specimens, and postage, a fee of 
two dollars will be charged, which may be sent to Professor Crosby 
with the application for membership. Each additional collection of 
twenty-five specimens will cost fifty cents ; and a price-list of the 
apparatus will accompany the book. 

Report of the Ninth Century — Chapters 801-900. 

803, Wyandotte, Kans. (A). We are thinking of building in the 
spring. We are collecting and studying with a will. We are now 
taking a course in geology, led by one of our members, and intend 
to take others as the season advances. We have opened two or 
three mounds and obtained several fine relics. A question arose 
concerning archaeology. Is it a natural science? Our collection 
comprises insects, minerals, Indian relics, shells, and a few bird- 
skins. We have decided not to make collections of birds' eggs. 



Wehold our meetings in the office of a prominent physician and 
scientist, but expect to put up our own building in the spring.— 
C. H. Casebolt, Sec. 

Sn, Nyack, N, Y. (A). The first regular meeting of the Agassiz 
Association in Nyack was held on March 26, 1885. Four members 
constituted Chapter 81 r. Since then the society has steadily in- 
creased, and now numbers twenty-fuiir members. Our method of 
work for each evening has been to have two specialists who are 
appointed by the President at the previous meeting. They are 
expected to prepare papers on some natural-history subject, while 
all the members are prepared with specimens. Any information 
they may possess connected with the specimen presented is gladly 
listened to. 

We now propose taking up entomology and, perhaps, other special 
subjects, which seems to be a better way of gaining information than 
the promiscuous manner we have been trying. 

During the summer we have field meelings which arc particularly 
pleasant. 

This summer a party of fourteen, including members and friends 
of the Association, spent a week at Sag Harbor, where they not 
only obtained specimens, but had a very pleasant evening with the 
Agassiz Chapter uf that place. — E. Partridge, Sec. 

812, Davenport, Iowa (C). This Chapter has progressed very 
much during the last six months, and has made many useful improve- 
ments. We have a good attendance at our weekly meetings, and 
have a good, energetic membership. We have adopted a new con- 
stitution ; we have two specimen cases and a great many valuable 
specimens; we have elected honorary members, and have estab- 
lished a new order of business. The average attendance during the 
past six months is fourteen. — Harold Benefiel, Cor. Sec. 

S18, Newark, N. J. (D). If we are as successful during the 
coming year as we have been for the last two, we can be thankful. 
We have ten members. We have a very good cabinet. On the 14th 
of March we held a celebration of the anniversaiy of our organiza- 
tion. We hired a hall, and carted our specimens down, and arranged 
them on tables around the room. About fifty persons were present, 
among them delegates from Roseville, and the Mayor of Newark. 
The Mayor made a neat little speech, in which be said he had read 
in St. Nicholas of the growth of the A. A. with the greatest pleas- 
ure. He spoke of our specimens, and said he could remember when 
blue-birds Hew about our streets as plentiful as the common English 
sparrow. We have begun our labors afresh, and hope that during 
the coming winter we shall learn more in regard to natural history. — 
H. Young, Jr., Sec. 

819, Hinsdale, III. We have filled a large cabinet. We are 
keeping the rules of order that are in your " A. A. Handbook," and 
find them very useful. One more member has been admitted. We 
have started a library, and have some valuable volumes in it. — Fred. 
A. Menge, Sec. 

820, Boston, Mass. (G). The majority of us are working boys; 
consequently our time for field work is limited to an occasional holi- 
day and the half Saturdays during the summer. But the little time 
we have is not wasted ; it is too valuable for that. The business at 
our meelings consists chiefly in comparing notes and observations, 
and occasionally the reading of an essay. We are now much inter- 
ested in the Boston Assembly, and are working hard to make it a 
success. — Thomas H. Fay, Sec, 8 N. Grove street, Boston. 

824, Fall River, Mass. (A}. Our special department is orni- 
thology, and we are doing well in that, and gaining knowledge. 
We should like to correspond with any interested in ornithology. — 
J. B. Richards, Sec. 

841, Montclair, N. J. (A). We hope to be able to get a club-room 
in a few months. Our chief study is entomology, but we also collect 
and study specimens of all the other branches. Correspondence 
with other Chapters is desired. — W. Hollis, Sec, Box 277. 

842, Elizabeth, N. J. (B). Our Chapter is getting along very 
nicely. We have now eight members and hope to interest others. 
We have not many minerals yet, but I hope we shall have a much 
fuller cabinet when the butterflies and flowers come again. — Ellen 
R.Jones, Sec. 

847, Washington, Ind. (A ). We have admitted one new mem- 
ber, John Kimball, and others are clamoring for admission. We 
have worked for four years to get our Chapter into good running 
order. Once we thought we had succeeded, when, as you know, 
we had n't. But in all this time, we ha\ e studied and worked out 
solutions, we think, to some of the problems involved in the question, 
" How to carry on a Chapter in a live manner ! " The future will 
tell. — Ben. W. Clawson, Sec. 

849, Boston, lifass. (H). When Dr. Lincoln became interested 
in our Chapter, and finally joined, it took on a new aspect. The 
teachers became interested, and all but one joined as honorary 
members. We study mineralogy entirely, and Dr. Lincoln is very 
liberal, giving us specimens at almost every meeting. — Sara E. 
Saunders, Sec. 

850, Bangor, Me. (A). At present I am the only member of our 
Chapter, but I am working hard for a reorganization, which I hope to 
effect soon. At any rate, 1 shall keep the number and name of the 
Chapter as long as I remain in the city. — Albert G. Davis, Sec. 

863, Frov., R. I. (E). A few days ago our President shot a 
red-headed woodpecker, which we added to our collection of skins. 
We have had several field meetings, and some pleasant meetings 
at our room. We are about to fit up anether room for winter use. 



TH E AGASSIZ ASSOC IATION. 



[January, 



We are all earnest workers, and hope soon to have a collection worth 
speaking about. — Frederic Gorham, Sec, 103 Knight street. 

874, Lee, Mass. (A). We have over twenty members, most of 
whom are active. We hold meetings every other Friday. We have 
a collection of insects, minerals, and a few of thejZora of the vicin- 
ity, making, in all, about three hundred specimens. Each of our 
members has a private collection, and some of them are quite suc- 
cessful. Our average attendance is about fifteen. We have made 
several excursions, such as to Monument Mountain. We are now 
planning to drive down to see Mr. Daniel Clarke's collection of min- 
erals and ' -'ns, said to be the finest in Berkshire County. We keep 
our collee in the grammar school room in a cabinet made and 

presented t is by one of our members. Some of our specimens 
are quite valu -ble. — Eddie C. Bradley, Sec. 

878, Woodh ridge, N. J. (A ). Our work during the past year has 
been quite satisfactory. We spent the winter in studying zoology 
together, beginning- at the lower forms, and proceeding to the higher. 
Some well-written papers were read. 

On May 28, we gave an entertainment in the public hall for the 
purpose of raising funds for the purchase of a microscope. We suc- 
ceeded, and, for sixty-five dollars, secured a fine instrument. Our 
Chapter numbers twenty-seven members and is growing. — R. Anna 
Miller, Sec. 

885, Blanckester, O. (A). With limited resources and facilities for 
working in the field of Nature, our zeal is nevertheless undiminished, 
and our first year closes nut altogether discouragingly, with brighter 
prospects for the future. 

Being a family Chapter, our meetings have not been regular. We 
have a botanist, ornithologist, and mineralogist in our Chapter. 

It has been our custom to have, at each meeting, a paper read 
(prepared by one of the members), giving a short sketch of some 
great naturalist or scientist. We intend takinr, up the study of the 
plants and birds of our own neighborhood the coming year. — Homer 
G. Curies, Sec. 

887, Grinnell, Iowa (A). The past six months have been very 
prosperous. We have added five members to our list, and out of seven- 
teen members, our average attendance has been fifteen. We have 
a good collection. Our library is steadily growing. Our Chapter 
edits a monthly paper called the Agassiz Notes to which every mem- 
ber contributes. Our special study is mineralogy, in which we have 
instruction once a month. The migration of spiders has been dili- 
gently studied. One member has been reporting to the Forestry 
Department of the United States Government, one working in bot- 
any for the American Ornithologists' Union, and all have been study- 
ing bird migration for that society. Three of our members took 
extensive trips North this summer and made some good observations. 
One member received a diploma for having satisfactorily completed 
Professor Crosby's course in mineralogy. Six of us attended the 
general convention at Davenport, and were highly delighted at the 
work of our sister Chapters. — Cor. Sec. Grinnell Ch., 887. Box 523. 

893, Watertowii, N. V. ( B), Since our Chapter last reported, we 
have had many interesting meetings. In the spring we postponed 
the study of the animal kingdom, which we had nearly completed. 
and took up the study of vegetable life as more suited to the season 
and to our abilities as collectors. Using Bessey and Gray as author- 
ity, we studied the subject topically, at the same time bringing into 
the class whatever specimens we could for illustration. Several of 
the class have started herbaria and are much interested in the work 
of collecting, pressing, and mounting. An herbarium has also been 
bought for the society and it will be filled with specimens donated 
by all the members of the Chapter. The study of zoology has now 
been resumed, and when it is completed, mineralogy and geology 
will be taken up for the winter. 

Some of the younger members have dropped out of the Chapter, 
so that our number has been reduced, but not our zeal or interest in 
the Society, of which we more and more appreciate the value. 

Our report is brief, for as the study of Nature opens ever wider 
vistas before us, we feel the slightness of our best achievements, and 
would rather record our hopes and purposes than what has been 
done. 

When we have finished a preliminary study of the three kingdoms, 
we intend each to adopt and report on a specialty, and may be able 
in that way to produce results valuable, at least, to ourselves. 

Wishing the A. A. continually growing 1 power and usefulness, we 
remain, very respectfully, Watertown Chap. B. — C. DuBois, Sec. 

896, Lake Forest, III. (A). We began with four members a year 
ago, and increased the number to six during the winter. We held 
regular meetings, two weeks, and later, three weeks apart, at which 
reports were made of work done, papers read, etc. 

Our proceedings were conducted in French, as two of our mem- 
bers were French, and we subscribed for a French, periodical, " La 
Science Pour Tous." Among the subjects of our papers were 
"Bees," "Ants," "Spiders," "The Cactus," "Mushrooms," 
"Mosses," "Witch-hazel," and "An Eruption of Vesuvius," this 
last by one who had been an eye-witness of the eruption. Several 
of the members were studying during the winter Morse's Zoology, 
which they found very interesting. 

We succeeded in collecting and mounting from seventy to ninety 



insects, and in filling an herbarium. We made a collection of leaves 
also, which we varnished and pressed. 

Our Chapter is now adjourned sine die. Three of the members 
are together abroad, one is dead, and the remaining two are in this 
country, but not together, so that no joint work can be done. A 
recent letter from one of the traveling members, dated from the 
Valley of Canterets, reports a colleciion of fifty insects from that 
region, and the butterfly-net in constant requisition. 

Wishing long life to the Association, we remain, yours truly, Lake 
Forest Chapter, M. W. Plummer, Sec. 

898, Soutkport, Coun. {A ). Our Chapter is now about fourteen 
months old. \\ e number at present ten members, and have a cabi- 
net containing nearly two hundred interesting specimens. The 
cabinet itself is a small one and we are now trying to obtain a new 
and larger one. We are also starting a library. Among the speci- 
mens are : a clover book containing one, two, three, four, five, and 
six leaved clovers; a specimen of gold from Australia; tourmaline, 
jasper, and asbestos from Southport, and granite from Mount 
Agassiz. 

There is a paper, published twice a month, and called the Agassiz 
Natu?-alist. We hold our meetings every month in one of the 
schoolrooms, where we have our cabinet and charter. 

Every week a suhject is given out, and the members write or read 
articles relating to it. The list includes such subjects as crows, coral, 
gold, sponge, clovers, etc. 

I think the Chapter is doing better now than at any time since its 
founding. — Warren G. Waterman, Pres. and Sec. 

Exchanges. 

Minerals and Indian relics, for same. Please send list and receive 
ours in exchange. — C. S. Casebolt, Sec. 803, Wyandotte, Kansas. 

Fossils, plants, land and fresh-water shells, for same. Correspond- 
ence desired. — Kemper Bennett, Cor. Sec, Chapter 834, Wyandotte, 
Kansas, <B). 

Crinoid stems of Indiana, free to any member of the A. A. Geo- 
logical reports of Indiana to exchange for specimens. — Ch. S. Beach- 
ler, Crawfordsville, Ind. 

Minerals and a large collection of stamps, for botanical specimens. 
— R. D. Pope. 177 Congress street, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Specimens of lepidoptera of N. V. and X. J., for diversified 
exchange in same line. — Caesar Leonhard, Carlstadt, Bergen Co., 
N.J. 

Lcpidoptej-a and a few coleoptera, for kpidoptera only. Send 
list. — Albert F. Winn, 1602 Catherine street, Montreal, P. Q. 

We should be glad to exchange fossils, of which we have a large 
variety, for classified minerals, such as rock crystal, rose quartz, 
amethyst, chalcedonv, jasper, opal, or would exchange for books and 
fossil fishes.— Mrs.'F. L. Brown, Shortsville, N. Y. 

Correspondence desired with members having well preserved 
insects to exchange. Also minerals. — Frederick C. Barber, 449 
W. 23d street, New York City. 

Chapters, New and Reorganized. 



No. 

81 

984 

399 



Name. No. 

Oxford, N. Y. (A) 

Sycamore, III. (B) 

New York, N. Y. (I).. 



12 Montreal, P. Q. (B). 



116 

426 
39 



600 
719 



Chicago, (B) 

DeKalb, 111. (A) . . . . 
Wellsville. Pa. (A)... . 
Greensbury, N. Y. (A). 

Elizabeth, N. J. (B).... 

Philadelphia, (J) 

New York, N. Y. (D) . . 

La Porte. Ind. (B) 

San Francisco, (A) 

Mechanicsburg. O. (A). 
Brooklyn, N. Y. (C) . . . 



Blanchester, O. (A). 
Crawfordsville, Ind., . 
Phila. I A') 



of Members. A ddress. 

.... 4. Fred. Bartle. 

.... 12. Arthur BueU, Lock Box 123. 

... 7.. Mr. Thomas B. Swift, 

1440 Lex. Av. 
.... 4..G. M. Edwards, 

Cote St. Antoine. 
. . , .10. .Robert J. Kerr, 10 Bryan PI. 
. . .12. .Jay Lott Warren. 
. . . 12. A. Dinsmore Belt. 
. . . .13. .Thos. C. Edwards, 

Irvington-on- Hudson. 
.... 7 . . Ellen R. Jones, 

531 Madison Av. 
.... 7. .S. T. Harkness, 

3409 Wallace St.,W. Phila. 
... 6. .FrancisJ. Tucker, 147 W. 20. 
... 6. . Percy L. Cole, Box 1203. 
.... 8.. Willie Eckart. 

2906 California St. 
... 20. .Miss Alta R. Williams. 
. . 9. .G. H. Backus, 

38 Grace Court. 
.... 7 . . Homer G. Curies. 

4 . Charles Beachler. 

Joined Phila. (A), No. 8. 



Secretaries of the first Century, (/. e.. Chapters 1-100) will please 
send in their annual reports by January 1. 

All are cordially invited to join the Association. Address all 
communications to Harlan H. Ballard, 

Pittsfield, Mass. 



THE RIDDLE-BOX. 



239 



THE RIDDLE-BOX. 



ANSWERS TO PUZZLES IN THE DECEMBER NUMBER. 



Easy Pictorial Puzzle. Shakspere. 1. All's Well that Ends 
Well. 2. Twelfth Night. 3. Cymbeline. 4. Measure for Measure. 
5. Winter's Tale. 6. King Lear. 7. The Tempest. 8. Hamlet. 
9. Much Ado About Nothing. 

Beheadings. Cohasset. 1. C-ream. 2. O-live. 3. H-aunt. 

4. A-lone. 5. S-lave. 6. S-hoot. 7. E-vent. S. T-rail. 

Pi. Hurrah for Eather Christmas! 
Ring all the merry bells, 
And bring the grandsires all around 
To hear the tale he tells. rose terry cooke. 

Word-squares. I. 1. Color. 2. Olive. 3. Linen. 4. Overt. 

5. Rents. II. 1. Pagan. 2. Alive. 3. Gibes. 4. Avert. 5. Nests. 
III. 1. Aware. 2. Wafer. 3. After. 4. Reeve. 5. Erred. 

A Bird-cage. Centrals, Partridge. Cross-words. 1. P. 2. jAy. 
3. heRon. 4. kesTrel. 5. redgRouse. 6. pelican. 7. nudDies. 
8. penGuin. 9. promErops. 

Rebus. An overgrown, underbred, and overbearing boy in over- 
alls undertook to investigate an overcoat, when an overworked 
but intent overseer happened to overlook his undertaking; and I 
understand that he was overpowered in the onset and underwent a 
strict inspection. The overseer did awe inspire, and the boy was 
overwhelmed between shame and fear, expecting to incur a few 
stripes, at least ; but he was soon overjoyed to depart under promise 
of reform. 



Star Puzzle. From 1 to 2, shingle ; 1 to 3, spangle ; 2 to 3, 
eroteme ; 4 to 5, brigand ; 4 to 6, bugloss ; 5 to 6, digr r "=s. 

Crowded Diamonds. Left-hand Diamond: 1. 2. Cap. 

3. Caret. 4. Maracan. 5. Pecan. 6. Tan. 7. N Right-hand 
Diamond: 1. C. 2. Tan. 3. Tuned. 4. Cantee 1. 5. Needy. 
6. Dey. 7. N. 

Double-Acrostic. I. Primals, warder; finals, dearth. Cross- 
words: 1. Wild. 2. Axle. 3. Rosa. 4. Doer. 5. Emit. 6. Rash. 
II. Primals, thread ; finals, drawer. Cross-words : 1. Tend. 
2. Hoar. 3. Roca. 4. Enow. 5. Ache. 6. Deer. III. Primals, 
reward; finals, hatred. Cross-words: 1. Rush. 2. Etna. 3. Wilt. 

4. Aver. 5. Raze. 6. Deed. 

Pyramid. Across: 1. G. 2. Pas. 3. Corks. 4. Hornito. 5. Bar- 
tering. 6. Timbertrees. Downward: i. T. 2. Bi. 3. Ham. 4. 
Corb. 5. Porte. 6. Garner. 7. Skirt. 8. Stir. 9. One. 10. Ge. 11. S. 
Triple- Acrostic. I. Magic-lantern. Cross-words : 1. Moot- 
court. 2. Available. 3. ( lormander. 4. Intention. II. Whitten- 
trees. Cross-words : 1. Wealthier. 2. Housewife. 3. Incensive. 
4. Taintless. 
Numerical Enigma. 

Be meiry all, be merry all, 
Willi holly dress the festive hall ; 
Prepare the song, the feast, the ball, 
To welcome merry Christmas. 



To our Puzzlers : In sending answers lo puzzles, sign only your initials or use a short assumed name; but if you send a complete 
list of answers, you may sign your full name. Answers should be addressed to St. Nicholas, " Letter-Box, " care of The Century Co., 
33 East Seventeenth St., New York City. 

Answers to all the Puzzles in the October Number were received, before October 20, from Paul Reese — Maud E. Palmer — 
"Tiny Puss, Mitz, and Muff" — F. W. Islip — Nellie and Reggie — " Shumway Hen and Chickens" — "Two Cousins" — "Topsy" — 
Katharine R. Wingate — Allison V. Robinson — C. Marion Edwards — "Judy and Elsy." 

Answers to Puzzles in the October Number were received, before October 20, from La Belle R., 1 — Pug, 1 — V. Lippin- 
cott, 1 — Don, 1 — " Donna Oecidenta," 2 — Helen, 1 — M. L. B., 1 — W. Charles, 1 — Effie K. Talboys, 7 — Irene, 4 — "Professor 
&Co.,"8 — "Ben Zeene," 2 — Sadie Hecht, 1 — " Sally Limn," and "Johnny Cake," 7 — Grace Seymour, 2 — Birdie Koehler, 7 — 
Grace E. Silsbee, 1 — Jo and I, 8 — Ida and Edith Swanwick, 4 — Mary P. Farr, 3 — Chester, 1 — C. S. S. and A. M. V., 7 — " Tagh- 
conic," 3 — " Ono," 2— L. M. B., 7 — Arthur and Bertie Knox, 8 — Jet, 5 — M. G. F. and M. L. G., 7 — " Original Puzzle Club," 5 — 
Lizzie A. R., 4 — Tommie and Katie, 6 — George M. Brown, ^ — L. A. R., 7 — Eugene Kell, 1 — " Poodle," 4. 




Each of the six small pictures may be described by a word of three 
letters. When these have been rightly guessed, and arranged one 
below another, in the order in which they'are numbered, the central 
letters will spell the name of the animal shown in the central picture. 

WORD-SQUARE. 

1. A person of wild behavior. 2. To punish by a pecuniary pen- 
alty. 3. A stratagem. 4. A very fine, hair-like feather. 5. To 
agree. 6. Removed the outer covering. "ironsides." 

WORD BUILDING. 

1. To within add to disembark and make remote from the sea. 
2 To an exclamation of triumph add to eat and make a substance 
obtained from the ashes of sea-weeds. 3. To a mixed mass of type 
add to estimate and make a sea-robber. 4. To half an em add a 



band of iron, and make complete. 5. To a Latin word meaning a 
bone, add to collect spoil and make a long-winged eagle. 6. To 
the eleventh month of the Jewish civil year add Turkish governors, 
and make monasteries. 7. To a conjunction add a confederate and 
make in words, without writing. 8. To a preposition add to try and 
make to bear witness to. F. l. f. 

NOVEL ARITHMETIC. 

Example: What number becomes even by subtracting one? 
Answer. S-even. 

r. What number becomes heavy by adding one ? 2. What num- 
ber belongs to us by subtracting one ? 3. What number increases 
ten-fold by adding one? 4. What number is elevated by adding 
one? 5. What number is finished by adding one ? 6. What num- 
ber becomes frequent by adding two ? 7. What number becomes 
animal by adding two? m. A. H. 



240 



THE RIDDLE-BOX. 



[January. 



DOUBLE-LETTER ENIGMA. 

Take one letter from each of the quoted words and make the name 
of ornamental cakes distributed among friends on the festival which 
comes on January 6th. The name by which the festival is called 
may also be found in the quoted words : 

In the " settle " that old folks will charm ; 
In the '" willows " that grow on the farm ; 
In the " presents " we had at New Year; 
In the "yule-log" so full of good cheer; 
In the " buffalo " on the broad plain ; 
In the " mottoes " we sigh for in vain ; 
In the " rush -light " — a thing of old days ; 
In the " candies" that all uf us praise; 
In the "pastimes" we 're so loth to leave; 
In the "stockings" we hung Christmas Eve; 
In the "hearthstone" so spacious and wide; 
In the " humestead " where loved ones abide. 

GILBERT FOREST. 

NUMERICAL ENIGMA. 

I am composed of one hundred and thirty-six letters, and am a 
stanza of eight short lines. 

My 1-40-8-101-36-75 is a tree having slender, pliant branches. 
My 53— 12-78-23-68-74— 115— 58-136-90 is one who is sent to spread 
religion. My 32-17-71-122-3-104-27-85-108 is a recital My 
125-21-64-120-6-131-99 is a shrub used in Great Britain for brooms. 
My 15-47-44-95-127-89-113-59 is to intrude. My 128-S7-19-111- 



10-116-93-100 is consumption. My 134-25-126-63-60-11S-30 is 
obliteration. My 31-72-23-56-107-62-80-42 is wealthy. My 
51-82-98-45-76-^9 are themes. My 18-84-48-9— 106-50-117-123-35 
are concluding speeches. My 110-14-102-5-55-1 12-135-37 iS relat- 
ing to tragic acting. My 67-24-65-109-103-41-57 is belonging to 
this world. My 38-34-79-91-70 is a specter. My £6-121-52-130-92 
is to meditat'e. My 66-96-22-77 is costly. My 88-69-133 is dis- 
torted. My 132-28-61-4-43-83 is deserving. My 13-2-94-26-81 is 
a piece of paper. My 46-124-73-33-20-129 is insignificant. My 
10 5 - 54-7-97-ii4 is to interlace. My 16-119-11-49 is cut down. 

F. S. F. 

A PENTAGON. 



Across: i. In St. Nicholas. 



Conducted. 



mechanical power. 4. Many. 5. To deduce. 
supply on condition of repayment. 

This reads the same up and down as across. 



The second 



6. A bird. 7- To 



L. LOS REGNI. 




MAKINGS riOVCPUZZLE 




The above one hundred squares contain the names of forty-five poets (both ancient and modern), which may be spelled out by what 
is known in chess as the "king's move." This, as all chess-players know, is one square at a time in any direction. The same square is 
not to be used twice in any one name In sending answers, indicate the squares by their numbers, thus: Shakspere, 75-S6-97-87- 
78-77-66-65-64. The names of forty-four other poets may be similarly spelled. R- F - M. _ 

A separate list of solvers of this puzzle will be prtntei The names of those sending the longest lists will hend the roll. Answers will 
be received until January 28. 




SETWEEN SEA AND SKY. 



ST. NICHOLAS 



Vol. XIV. 



FEBRUARY, 1887. 



[Copyright, 1887, by The CENTURY CO.] 



No. 4. 





CEL'AND is the most beautiful land the 
sun cloth shine upon," said Sigurd 
Sigurdson to his two sons. 

' ' How can you know that, Father," 

asked Thoralf, the elder of the two 

boys, "when you have never been 

anywhere else ? " 

"I know it in my heart," said Sigurd devoutly. 

" It is, after all, a matter of taste," observed the 

son. " I think, if I were hard pressed, I might be 

induced to put up with some other country." 

"You ought to blush with shame," his father 
rejoined warmly. "You do not deserve the name 
of an Icelander, when you fail to see how you have 
been blessed in having been born in so beautiful 
a country." 

" I wish it were less beautiful and had more 
things to eat in it," muttered Thoralf. "Salted cod- 
fish, I have no doubt, is good for the soul, but it 
rests very heavily on the stomach, especially when 
you eat it three times a day." 

" You ought to thank God that you have cod- 
fish, and are not a naked savage on some South 



By Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen. 

I. 

Sea isle, who feeds like an animal on the herbs of 
the earth." 

" But I like codfish much better than smoked 
puffin," remarked Jens, the younger brother, who 
was carving a pipe-bowl. "Smoked puffin always 
makes me sea-sick. It tastes like cod liver oil." 

Sigurd smiled, and, patting the younger boy on 
the head, entered the cottage. 

" You should n't talk so to Father, Thoralf," said 
Jens, with superior dignity ; for his father's caress 
made him proud and happy. " Father works so 
hard, and he does not like to see any one discon- 
tented." 

" That is just it," replied the elder brother; " he 
works so hard, and yet barely manages to keep 
the wolf from the door. That is what makes me 
impatient with the country. If he worked so hard 
in any other country he would live in abundance, 
and in America he would become a rich man." 

This conversation took place one day, late in 
the autumn, outside of a fisherman's cottage on 
the northwestern coast of Iceland. The wind 
was blowing a gale down from the very ice-en- 



244 



BETWEEN SEA AND SKY. 



[February, 



girdled pole, and it required a very genial temper 
to keep one from getting blue. The ocean, which 
was but a few hundred feet distant, roared like an 
angry beast, and shook its white mane of spray, 
flinging it up against the black clouds. With 
every fresh gust of wind, a shower of salt water 
would fly hissing through the air and whirl about 
the chimney-top, which was white on the wind- 
ward side from dried deposits of brine. On the 
turf-thatched roof big pieces of driftwood, weighted 
down with stones, were laid lengthwise and cross- 
wise, and along the walls fishing-nets hung in fes- 
toons from wooden pegs. Even the low door was 
draped, as with decorative intent, with the folds of 
a great drag-net. the clumsy cork-floats of which 
often dashed into the faces of those who attempted 
to enter. Under a driftwood shed which projected 
from the northern wall was seen a pile of peat, cut 
into square blocks, and a quantity of the same 
useful material might be observed down at the 
beach, in a boat which the boys had been unload- 
ing when the storm blew up. Trees no longer 
grow in the island, except the crippled and twisted 
dwarf-birch, which creeps along the ground like 
a snake, and, if it ever dares lift its head, rarely 
grows more than four or six feet high. In the 
olden time, which is described in the so-called 
sagas of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Ice- 
land had very considerable forests of birch and 
probably also of pine. But they were cut down ; 
and the climate has gradually been growing colder, 
until now even the hardiest tree, if it be induced 
to strike root in a sheltered place, never reaches 
maturity. The Icelanders therefore burn peat, 
and use for building their houses driftwood, which 
is carried to them by the Gulf Stream from Cuba 
and the other well-wooded isles along the Mexican 
Gulf. 

" If it keeps blowing like this," said Thoralf, 
fixing his weather eye on the black horizon, "we 
shan't be able to go a-fishing ; and Mother says 
the larder is very nearly empty." 

" I wish it would blow down an Englishman 
or something on us," remarked the younger 
brother; '■Englishmen always have such lots of 
money, and they are willing to pay for everything 
they look at." 

'• While you are a-wishing, why don't you wish 
for an American ? Americans have mountains 
and mountains of money, and they don't mind a 
bit what they do with it. That 's the reason I 
should like to be an American." 

" Yes, let us wish for an American or two to 
make us comfortable for the winter. But 1 am 
afraid it is too late in the season to expect foreign- 
ers. 

The two boys chatted together in this strain, 



each working at some piece of wood-carving 
which he expected to sell to some foreign traveler. 
Thoralf was sixteen years old, tall of growth, but 
round-shouldered, from being obliged to work 
when he was too young. He was rather a hand- 
some lad, though his features were square and 
weather-beaten, and he looked prematurely old. 
Jens, the younger boy, was fourteen years old, 
and was his mother's darling. For even up under 
the North Pole mothers love their children ten- 
derly, and sometimes they love one a little more 
than another ; that is, of coui'se, the merest wee 
bit of a fraction of a trifle more. Icelandic moth- 
ers are so constituted that when one child is a 
little weaker and sicklier than the rest, and thus 
seems to be more in need of petting, they are apt 
to love their little weakling above all their other 
children, and to lavish the tenderest care upon 
that one. It was because little Jens had so narrow 
a chest, and looked so small and slender by the 
side of his robust brother, that his mother always 
singled him out for favors and caresses. 



I I. 



All night long the storm danced wildly about 
the cottage, rattling the windows, shaking the 
walls, and making fierce assaults upon the door, 
as if it meant to burst in. Sometimes it bellowed 
hoarsely down the chimney, and whirled the ashes 
on the hearth, like a gray snowdrift, through the 
room. The fire had been put out, of course ; but 
the dancing ashes kept up a fitful patter, like 
that of a pelting rainstorm, against the walls ; they 
even penetrated into the sleeping alcoves and pow- 
dered the heads of their occupants. For in Ice- 
land it is only well-to-do people who can afford to 
have separate sleeping-rooms ; ordinary folk sleep 
in little closed alcoves, along the walls of the sit- 
ting-room ; masters and servants, parents and chil- 
dren, guests and wayfarers, all retiring at night 
into square little holes in the walls, where they 
undress behind sliding trapdoors which may be 
opened again, when the lights have been put out, 
and the supply of air threatens to become exhausted. 
It was in a little closet of this sort that Thoralf and 
Jens were lying, listening to the roar of the storm. 
Thoralf dozed off occasionally, and tried gently 
to extricate himself from his frightened brother's 
embrace ; but Jens lay with wide-open eyes, star- 
ing into the dark, and now and then sliding the 
trapdoor aside and peeping out, until a blinding 
shower of ashes would again compel him to slip 
his head under the sheepskin coverlet. When at 
last he summoned courage to peep out, he could 
not help shuddering. It was terribly cheerless 
and desolate. And all the time, his father's words 



,SS 7 .J 



BETWEE N S V. A A N D S K V 



^45 



kept ringing ironically in his ears: ''Iceland is 
the most beautiful land the sun doth shine upon." 
For the first time in his life he began to ques- 
tion whether his father might not possibly be 
mistaken, or, perhaps, blinded by his love for his 
country. But the boy immediately repented of 
this doubt, and, as if to convince himself in spite 
of everything, kept repeating the patriotic motto 
to himself until he fell asleep. 

It was yet pitch dark in the room, when he was 
awakened by his father, who stood stooping over 
him. 

"Sleep on, child," said Sigurd; "it was your 
brother I wanted to wake up, not you." 

" What is the matter, Father? What has hap- 
pened ? " cried Jens, rising up in bed. and rubbing 
the ashes from the corners of his eyes. 

"We are snowed up," said the father quietly. 
"It is already nine o'clock, I should judge, or 
thereabouts, but not a ray of light comes through 
the windows. I want Thoralf to help me open the 
door." 

Thoralf was by this time awake, and finished 
his primitive toilet with much dispatch. The 
darkness, the damp cold, and the unopened win- 
dow-shutters impressed him ominously. He felt 
as if some calamity had happened or were about 
to happen. Sigurd lighted a piece of driftwood 
and stuck it into a crevice in the wall. The storm 
seemed to have ceased : a strange, tomb-like 
silence prevailed without and within. On the low 
hearth lay a small snowdrift which sparkled with 
a starlike glitter in the light. 

" Bring the snow-shovels, Thoralf," said Sigurd. 
" Be quick ; lose no time." 

" They are in the shed outside," answered Tho- 
ralf. 

" That is very unlucky," said the father ; " now 
we shall have to use our fists." 

The door opened outward, and it was only with 
the greatest difficulty that father and son suc- 
ceeded in pushing it ajar. The storm had driven 
the snow with such force against it that their efforts 
seemed scarcely to make any impression upon the 
dense white wall which rose up before them. 

" This is of no earthly use, Father," said the 
boy; "it is a day's job at the very least. Let 
me rather try the chimney." 

" But you might stick in the snow and perish," 
objected the father anxiously. 

" Weeds don't perish so easily," said Thoralf. 

" Stand up on the hearth. Father, and I will 
climb up on your shoulders," urged the boy. 

Sigurd half reluctantly complied with his son's 
request, who crawled up his father's back, and soon 
planted his feet on the paternal shoulders. He 
pulled his knitted woolen cap over his eyes and 



ears so as to protect them from the drizzling soot 
which descended in intermittent showers. Then, 
groping with his toes for a little projection of 
the wall, he gained a securer foothold, and, push- 
ing boldly on, soon thrust his sooty head through 
the snow-crust. A chorus as of a thousand howl- 
ing wolves burst upon his bewildered sense ; the 
storm raged, shrieked, roared, and nearly swept 
him off his feet. Its biting breath smote his face 
like a sharp whip-lash. 

"Give me my sheepskin coat," he cried down 
into the cottage ; " the wind chills me to the bone." 

The sheepskin coat was handed to him on the 
end of a pole, and seated upon the edge of the 
chimney, he pulled it on and buttoned it securely. 
Then he rolled up the edges of his cap in front 
and cautiously exposed his eyes and the tip of his 
nose. It was not a pleasant experiment, but one 
dictated by necessity. As far as he could see, the 
world was white with snow, which the storm 
whirled madly around, and swept now earthward, 
now heavenward. Great funnel-shaped columns 
of snow danced up the hillsides and vanished 
against the black horizon. The prospect before 
the boy was by no means inviting, but he had 
been accustomed to battle with dangers since his 
earliest childhood, and he was not easily dismayed. 
With much deliberation, he climbed over the edge 
of the chimney, and rolled down the slope of the 
roof in the direction of the shed. lie might have 
rolled a great deal farther, if he had not taken the 
precaution to roll against the wind. When he had 
made sure that he was in the right locality, he 
checked himself by spreading his legs and arms ; 
then, judging by the outline of the snow where 
the door of the shed was, he crept along the edge 
of the roof on the leeward side. He looked more 
like a small polar bear than a boy, covered, as he 
was, with snow from head to foot. He was pre- 
pared for a laborious descent, and raising himself 
up he jumped with all his might, hoping that his 
weight would carry him a couple of feet down. 
To his utmost astonishment he accomplished con- 
siderably more. The snow yielded under his feet as 
if it had been eider-down, and he tumbled head- 
long into a white cave right at the entrance to 
the shed. The storm, while it had packed the 
snow on the windward side, had naturally scattered 
it very loosely on the leeward, which left a con- 
siderable space unfilled under the projecting eaves. 

Thoralf picked himself up and entered the shed 
without difficulty. He made up a large bundle of 
peat, which he put into a basket which could be 
carried, by means of straps, upon the back. With 
a snow-shovel he then proceeded to dig a tunnel 
to the nearest window. This was not a very hard 
task, as the distance was not great. The window 



246 



BETWEEN SEA AND SKY. 



[Fet're.'ary, 



was opened and the basket of peat, a couple of 
shovels, and two pairs of skees * (to be used in case 
of emergency) were handed in. Thoralf himself, 
who was hungry as a wolf, made haste to avail 
himself of the same entrance. And it occurred to 
him as a happy afterthought that he might have 
saved himself much trouble if he had selected the 




'HE CLIMBED OV'EK THE EDGE 



window instead of the chimney, when he sallied 
forth on his expedition. He had erroneously taken 
it for granted that the snow would be packed as 
hard everywhere as it was at the front door. The 
mother, who had been spendingthis exciting half- 
hour in keeping little Jens warm, now lighted a 
fire and made coffee ; and Thoralf needed no 



coaxing to do justice to his breakfast, even though 
it had, like everything else in Iceland, a flavor of 
salted fish. 

III. 

Five days had passed, and still the storm raged 
with unabated fury. The access to the ocean was 
cut off, and. with that, ac- 
cess to food. Already the 
last handful of flour had 
been made into bread,, 
and of the dried cod which 
hung in rows under the 
ceiling only one small 
and skinny specimen 
remained. The father 
and the mother sat with 
mournful faces at the 
hearth, the former read- 
ing in his hymn-book, 
the latter stroking the 
hair of heryoungest boy. 
Thoralf. who was carv- 
ing at his everlasting 
pipe-bowl (a corpulent 
and short-legged Turk 
with an enormous mus- 
tache), looked up sud- 
denly from his work and 
glanced questioningly at 
his father. 

•• Father," he said ab- 
ruptly, " how would you 
like to starve to death ? " 
" God will preserve us 
from that, my son," an- 
swered the father de- 
voutly. 

" Not unless we try to 
preserve ourselves," re- 
torted the boy earnestly. 
"We can't tell how long 
this storm is going to 
last, and it is better for 
us to start out in search 
of food now, while we are 
yet strong, than to wait 
•until later, when, as like- 
ly as not, we shall be 
weakened by hunger." 
"But what would you have me do, Thoralf?" 
asked the father sadly. "To venture out on the 
ocean in this weather would be certain death." 

" True ; but we can reach the Pope's Nose on our 
skees, and there we might snare or shoot some auks 
and gulls. Though I am not partial to that kind of 
diet myself, it is always preferable to starvation." 



THE CHIMNEY, 



*Skee 



: a kind of snowshoe, four to six feet long, bent upward in front, with a band to attach it to the foot in the middle. 



BETWEEN SEA AND SKY. 



247 



" Wait, my son, wait," said Sigurd earnestly. 
" We have food enough for to-day, and by to- 
morrow the storm will have ceased, and we may go 
fishing without endangering our lives." 

" As you wish, Father," the son replied, a trifle 
hurt at his father's unresponsive manner; " but if 
you will take a look out of the chimney, you will 
find that it looks black enough to storm for another 
week." 

The father, instead of accepting this suggestion, 
went quietly to his book-case, took out a copy 
of Livy, in Latin, and sat down to read. Occa- 
sionally he looked up a word in the lexicon 
(which he had borrowed from the public library at 
Reykjavik), but read nevertheless with apparent 
fluency and pleasure. Though he was a fisher- 
man, he was also a scholar, and during the long 
winter evenings he had taught himself Latin and 
even a smattering of Greek.* In Iceland the peo- 
ple have to spend their evenings at home; and es- 
pecially since their millennial celebration in 1876, 
when American scholars t presented the people with 
a large library, books are their unfailing resource. 
In the case of Sigurd Sigurdson, however, books 
had become a kind of dissipation, and he had to 
be weaned gradually of his predilection for Homer 
and Livy. His oldest son especially looked upon 
Latin and Greek as a vicious indulgence, which no 
man with a family could afford to foster. Many 
a day when Sigurd ought to have been out in his 
boat casting his nets, he staid at home reading. 
And this, in Thoralfs opinion, was the chief rea- 
son why they would always remain poor and run 
the risk of starvation, whenever a stretch of bad 
weather prevented them from going to sea. 

The next morning — the sixth since the break- 
ing of the storm — Thoralf climbed up to his post 
of observation on the chimney top, and saw. to 
his dismay, that his prediction was correct. It had 
ceased snowing, but the wind was blowing as 
fiercely as ever, and the cold was intense. 

" Will you follow me, Father, or will you not?" 
he asked, when he had accomplished his descent 
into the room. " Our last fish is now eaten, anil 
our last loaf of bread will soon follow suit." 

" I will go with you, my son," answered Sigurd, 
putting down his Livy reluctantly. He had just been 
reading for the hundredth time about the expul- 
sion of the Tarquins from Rome, and his blood 
was aglow with sympathy and enthusiasm. 

" Here is your coat, Sigurd," said his wife, 
holding up the great sheepskin garment, and as- 
sisting him in putting it on. 



" And here are your skees and your mittens and 
your cap," cried Thoralf, eager to seize the mo- 
ment when his father was in the mood for action. 

Muffled up like Eskimos to their very eyes, 
armed with bows and arrows and long poles with 
nooses of horse-hair at the ends, they sallied forth 
on their skees. The wind blew straight into their 
faces, forcing their breaths down their throats 
and compelling them to tack in zigzag lines like 
ships in a gale. The promontory called "The 
Pope's Nose " was about a mile distant; but in 
spite of their knowledge of the land, they went 
twice astray, and had to lie down in the snow, 
every now and then, so as to draw breath and 
warm the exposed portions of their faces. At the 
end of nearly two hours, they found themselves at 
their destination, but to their unutterable astonish- 
ment, the ocean seemed to have vanished, and as 
far as their eyes could reach, a vast field of packed 
ice loomed up against the sky in fantastic bas- 
tions, turrets, and spires. The storm had driven 
down this enormous arctic wilderness from the 
frozen precincts of the pole ; and now they were 
blockaded on all sides, and cut off from all inter- 
course with humanity. 

" We are lost, Thoralf," muttered his father, 
after having gazed for some time in speechless 
despair at the towering icebergs ; " we might just 
as well have remained at home." 

" The wind, which has blown the ice down up- 
on us, can blow it away again too," replied the 
son with forced cheerfulness. 

" I see no living thing here," said Sigurd, spy- 
ing anxiously seaward. 

'• Nor do I," rejoined Thoralf; " but if we hunt. 
we shall. I have brought a rope, and I am going 
to pay a little visit to those auks and gulls that 
must be hiding in the sheltered nooks of the rocks." 

"Are you mad, boy?" cried the father in 
alarm. " I will never permit it ! " 

" There is no help for it. Father," said the boy 
resolutely. " Here, you take hold of one end of 
the rope ; the other I will secure about my waist. 
Now, get a good strong hold, and brace your feet 
against the rock there." 

Sigurd, after some remonstrance, yielded, as 
was his wont, to his son's resolution and courage. 
Stepping off his skees, which he stuck endwise into 
the snow, and burrowing his feet down until they 
reached the solid rock, he tied the rope around his 
waist and twisted it about his hands, and at last, 
with quaking heart, gave the signal for the peril- 
ous enterprise. The promontory, which rose ab- 



* Lord Dufferin tells, in his " Letters from High Latitudes," how the Icelandic pilots conversed with him in Latin, and other travelers 
have many similar tales to relate. 

t Prof. Willard Fiske, of Cornell University, was instrumental in collecting in the United States a library of several thousand volumes, 
which he presented to the Icelanders on the one thousandth birthday of their nation. 



248 



B E T \V E E X S E A A X D SKY. 



I Febri t arv 



ruptly to a height of two or three hundred feet 
fiom the sea, presented a jagged wall full of nooks 
and crevices glazed with frozen snow on the wind- 
ward side, but black and partly bare to leeward. 

"Now. let go!" shouted Thoralf: "and stop 
when I give a slight pull at the rope." 

" All right," replied his father. 

And slowly, slowly, hovering in mid-air, now 
yielding to an irresistible impulse of dread, now 
brave, cautious, and confident, Thoralf descended 
the cliff, which no human foot had ever trod be- 
fore. He held in his hand the pole with the 
horse-hair noose, and over his shoulder hung 
a foxskin hunting-bag. With alert, wide-open 
eyes he spied about him, exploring every cranny 
of the rock, and thrusting his pole into the holes 
where he suspected the birds might have taken 
refuge. Sometimes a gust of wind would have 
flung him violently against the jagged wall if he- 
had not, by means of his pole, warded off the col- 
lision. At last he caught sight of a bare ledge, 
where he might gain a secure foothold ; for the 
rope cut him terribly about the waist, and made 
him anxious to relieve the strain, if only for a mo- 
ment. He gave the signal to his father, and by 
the aid of his pole swung himself over to the pro- 
jecting ledge. It was uncomfortably narrow, and, 
what was worse, the remnants of a dozen auk's 
nests had made the place extremely slippery. 
Nevertheless, he seated himself, allowing his feet 
to dangle, and gazed out upon the vast ocean, 
which looked in its icy grandeur like a forest of 
shining towers and minarets. It struck him for 
the first time in his life that perhaps his father 
was right in his belief that Iceland was the fairest 
land the sun doth shine upon ; but he could not 
help reflecting that it was a very unprofitable kind 
of beauty. The storm whistled and howled over- 
head, but under the lee of the sheltering rock it 
blew only in fitful gusts with intermissions of com- 
parative calm. He knew that in fair weather this 
was the haunt of innumerable seabirds, and he 
concluded that even now they could not be far 
away. He pulled up his legs, and crept carefully 
on hands and feet along the slippery ledge, peering 
intently into every nook and crevice. His eyes, 
which had been half-blinded by the glare of the 
snow, gradually recovered their power of vision. 
There ! What was that ? Something seemed to 
move on the ledge below. Yes, there sat a long row 
of auks, some erect as soldiers, as if determined to 
face it out; others huddled together in clusters, and 
comically woe-begone. Quite a number lay dead 
at the base of the rock, whether from starvation or 
as the victims of fierce fights for the possession 



of the sheltered ledges could scarcely be deter- 
mined. Thoralf, delighted at the sight of any- 
thing eatable (even though it was poor eating), 
gently lowered the end of his pole, slipped the 
noose about the neck of a large, military-looking 
fellow", and, with a quick pull, swung him out over 
the ice-field. The auk gave a few ineffectual flaps 
with his useless wings,* and expired. His picking 
off apparently occasioned no comment whatever 
in his family, for his comrades never uttered a 
sound nor stirred an inch, except to take posses- 
sion of the place he had vacated. Number two 
met his fate with the same listless resignation ; and 
numbers three, four, and five were likewise re- 
moved in the same noiseless manner, without im- 
pressing their neighbors with the fact that their 
turn might come next. The birds were half-be- 
numbed with hunger, and their usually alert senses 
were drowsy and stupefied. Nevertheless, number 
six, when it felt the noose about its neck, raised 
a hubbub that suddenly aroused the whole col- 
ony, and, with a chorus of wild screams, the 
birds flung themselves down the cliffs or, in their 
bewilderment, dashed headlong down upon the 
ice, where they lay half stunned or helplessly 
sprawling. So through all the caves and hiding- 
places of the promontory the commotion spread, 
and the noise of screams and confused chatter 
mingled with the storm and filled the vault of the 
sky. In an instant, a great flock of gulls was on 
the wing, and circled with resentful shrieks about 
the head of the daring intruder who had disturbed 
their wintry peace. The wind whirled them about, 
but they still held their own, and almost brushed 
with their wings against his face, while he struck 
out at them with his pole. He had no intention 
of catching them ; but, by chance, a huge burgo- 
master gull* got its foot into the noose. It made 
an ineffectual attempt to disentangle itself, then, 
with piercing screams, flapped its great wings, 
beating the air desperately. Thoralf, having 
packed three birds into his hunting-bag, tied the 
three others together by the legs, and flung them 
across his shoulders. Then, gradually trusting 
his weight to the rope, he slid off the rock, and 
was about to give his father the signal to hoist 
him up. But, greatly to his astonishment, his 
living captive, by the power of its mighty wings, 
pulling at the end of the pole, swung him consid- 
erably farther into space than he had calculated. 
He would have liked to let go both the gull and 
the pole, but he perceived instantly that if he did, 
he would, by the mere force of his weight, be 
rlung back against the rocky wall. He did not 
dare take that risk, as the blow might be hard 



* The auk can not fly well, but uses its wings for swimming and diving. 
*The burgomaster gull is the largest of all gulls- It is thirty inches long, exclusive of its tail, and its wings have a span of five feet. 



BET WHEN SEA AND SKY. 



249 



enough to stun him. A strange, tingling sen- 
sation shot through his nerves, and the blood 
throbbed with a surging sound in his ears. There 
he hung suspended in mid-air, over a terrible preci- 
pice — and a hundred feet below was the jagged 
ice-field with its sharp, fiercely-shining steeples ! 
With a powerful effort of will, he collected his 
senses, clenched his teeth, and strove to think 
clearly. The gull whirled wildly eastward and 
westward, and he swayed with its every motion 
like a living pendulum between sea and sky. He 
began to grow dizzy, but again his powerful will 
came to his rescue, and he gazed resolutely up 
against the brow of the precipice and down upon 
the projecting ledges below, in order to accustom 
his eye and his mind to the sight. By a strong 
effort he succeeded in giving a pull at the rope, 
and expected to feel himself raised upward by 
his father's strong arms. But to his amazement. 
there came no response to his signal. He repeated 
it once, twice, thrice ; there was a slight tugging 
at the rope, but no upward movement. Then 
the brave lad's heart stood still, and his courage 
well-nigh failed him. 

" Father ! " he cried, with a hoarse voice of de- 
spair; ■' why don't you pull me up? " 

His cry was lost in the roar of the wind, and 
there came no answer. Taking hold once more 
of the rope with one hand, he considered the 
possibility of climbing ; but the miserable gull, 
seeming every moment to redouble its efforts at 
escape, deprived him of the use of his hands un- 
less he chose to dash out his brains by collision 
with the rock. Something like a husky, choked 
scream seemed to float down from above, and 
staring again upward, he saw his father's head 
projecting over the brink of the precipice. 

"The rope will break," screamed Sigurd. "I 
have tied it to the rock." 

Thoralf instantly took in the situation. By the 
swinging motion, occasioned both by the wind 
and his fight with the gull, the rope had become 
frayed against the sharp edge of the cliff, and his 
chances of life, he coolly concluded, were now not 
worth a sixpence. Curiously enough, his agitation 
suddenly left him, and a great calm came over him. 
He seemed to stand face to face with eternity ; and 
as nothing else that he could do was of any avail, 
he could at least steel his heart to meet death like 
a man and an Icelander. 

" I am trying to get hold of the rope below the 
place where it is frayed," he heard his father shout 
during a momentary lull in the storm. 

" Don't try," answered the boy ; ''you can't do it, 
alone. Rather, let me down on the lower ledge, 
and let me sit there until you can go and get some 
one to help you." 



His father, accustomed to take his son's advice, 
reluctantly lowered him ten or twenty feet until he 
was on a level with the shelving ledge below, which 
was broader than the one upon which he had first 
gained foothold. But — oh, the misery of it ! — the 
ledge did not project far enough! He could not 
reach it with his feet ! The rope, of which only 
a few strands remained, might break at any mo- 
ment and — he dared not think what would be the 
result ! He had scarcely had time to consider, 
when a brilliant device shot through his brain. 
With a sudden thrust he flung away the pole, and 
the impetus of his weight sent him inward with 
such force that he landed securely upon the broad 
shelf of rock. 

The gull, surprised by the sudden weight of the 
pole, made a somersault, strove to rise again, and 
tumbled, with the pole still depending from its leg, 
down upon the ice-field. 

It was well that Thoralf was warmly clad, or he 
could never have endured the terrible hours while 
he sat through the long afternoon, hearing the 
moaning and shrieking of the wind and seeing the 
darkness close about him. The storm was chilling 
him with its fierce breath. One of the birds he tied 
about his throat as a sort of scarf, using the feet 
and neck for making the knot, and the dense, 
downy feathers sent a glow of comfort through 
him, in spite of his consciousness that every hour 
might be his last. If he could only keep awake 
through the night, the chances were that lie 
would survive to greet the morning". He hit upon 
an ingenious plan for accomplishing this purpose. 
He opened the bill of the auk which warmed his 
neck, cut off the lower mandible, and placed the 
upper one (which was as sharp as a knife) so that 
it would inevitably cut his chin in case he should 
nod. He leaned against the rock and thought of 
his mother and the warm, comfortable chimney- 
corner at home. The wind probably resented this 
thought, for it suddenly sent a biting gust right 
into Thoralf's face, and he buried his nose in the 
downy breast of the auks until the pain had sub- 
sided. The darkness had now settled upon sea 
and land ; only here and there white steeples 
loomed out of the gloom. Thoralf, simply to 
occupy his thought, began to count them. But 
all of a sudden one of the steeples seemed to move, 
then another — and another. 

The boy feared that the long strain of excitement 
was depriving him of his reason. The wind, too, 
after a few wild arctic howls, acquired a warmer 
breath and a gentler sound. It could not be pos- 
sible that he was dreaming. For in that case he 
would soon be dead. Perhaps he was dead al- 
ready, and was drifting through this strange icy 
vista to a better world. All these imaginings flit- 



2 5° 



BETWEEN SEA AND SKY, 



[February, 



ted through his mind, and were again dismissed as 
improbable. He scratched his face with the foot 
of an auk in order to convince himself that he was 
really awake. Yes, there could be no doubt of it ; 
he was wide awake. Accordingly he once more 
fixed his eyes upon the ghostly steeples and towers, 
and — it sent cold shudders down his back — they 
were still moving. Then there came a fusilade as 
of heavy artillery, followed by a salvo of 
lighter musketry ; then came a fierce grind- jm 
ing, and cracking, and creaking sound, as it ^g 
the whole ocean were of glass and were ;£;-; 
breaking to pieces. "What," thought W\ 
Thoralf, "if the ice is breaking to pieces ! " ||&i 
In an instant, the explanation of the whol 
spectral panorama was clear as the day. 
The wind had veered round to the south- 
east, and the whole enormous ice-floe was 
being driven out to sea. For several hours 
— he could not tell how many — he sat 
watching this superb spectacle by the pale 
light of the aurora borealis, which toward 
midnight began to flicker across the sky 
and illuminated the northern horizon. He 
found the sight so interesting that for a 
while he forgot to be sleepy. But toward 
morning, when the aurora began to fade 
and the clouds to cover the east, a terrible 
weariness was irresistibly stealing over him. 
He could see glimpses of the black water 
beneath him : and the shining spires of ice 
were vanishing in the dusk, drifting rapidly 
away upon the arctic currents with death 
and disaster to ships and crews that might 
happen to cross their paths. 

It was terrible at what a snail's pace the 
hours crept along ! It seemed to Thoralf 
as if a week had passed since his father left 
him. He pinched himself in order to keep 
awake, but it was of no use ; his eyelids 
would slowly droop and his head would in- 
cline — horrors! what was that? Oh, he 
had forgotten ; it was the sharp mandible 
ot the auk that cut his chin. He put his 
hand up to it, and felt something warm 
and clammy on his fingers. He was bleed- 
ing. It took Thoralf several minutes to stay 
the blood — the wound was deeper than he 
had bargained for ; but it occupied him and 
kept him awake, which was of vital importance. 

At last, after a long and desperate struggle with 
drowsiness, he saw the dawn break faintly in the 
east. It was a mere feeble promise of light, a re- 
mote suggestion that there was such a thing as day. 
But to the boy, worn out by the terrible strain of 
death and danger staring him in the face, it was a 
glorious assurance that rescue was at hand. The 



tears came into his eyes — not tears of weakness, 
but tears of gratitude that the terrible trial had 
been endured. Gradually the light spread like a 
pale, grayish veil over the eastern sky, and the ocean 
caught faint reflections of the presence of the unseen 
sun. The wind was mild, and thousands of birds 
that had been imprisoned by the ice in the crevices 
of the rocks whirled triumphantly into the air and 





"a stout rope was dangling in mid-air and slowly 
approaching him." 

plunged with wild screams into the tide below. It 
was hard to imagine where they all had been, for 
the air seemed alive with them, the cliffs teemed 
with them; and they fought, and shrieked, and 
chattered, like a howling mob in times of famine. 
It was owing to this unearthly tumult that Thoralf 
did not hear the voice which called to him from the 
top of the cliff. His senses were half-dazed by the 



ANSWERED RIDDLE JINGLES. 



251 



noise and by the sudden relief from the excitement 
of the night. Then there came two voices float- 
ing down to him — then quite a chorus. He tried 
to look up, but the beetling brow of the rock pie- 
vented him from seeing anything but a stout rope, 
which was dangling in mid-air and slowly ap- 
proaching him. With all the power of his lungs 
he responded to the call ; and there came a wild 
cheer from above — a cheer full of triumph and 
joy. He recognized the voices of Hunding's sons, 
who lived on the other side of the promontory ; and 
he knew that even without their father they were 
strong enough to pull up a man three times his 
weight. The difficulty now was only to get hold 
•ot the rope, which hung too far out for his hands to 
reach it. 

" Shakethe rope hard," he called up ; and imme- 
diately the rope was shaken into serpentine undu- 
lations ; and after a few vain efforts, he succeeded 
in catching hold of the knot. To secure the rope 
about his waist and to give the signal for the as- 



cent was but a moment's work. They hauled vig- 
orously, those sons of Hunding — for he rose, up, 
along the black walls — up — up — up — with no 
uncertain motion. At last, when he was at the 
very brink of the precipice, he saw his father's pale 
and anxious face leaning out over the abyss. But 
there was another face too! Whose could it be? 
It was a woman's face. It was his mother's. 
Somebody swung him out into space ; a strange, 
delicious dizziness came over him ; his eyes were 
blinded with tears ; he did not know where he was. 
He only knew that he was inexpressibly happy. 
There came a tremendous cheer from somewhere, — 
for Icelanders know how to cheer, — but it pene- 
trated but faintly through his bewildered senses. 
Something cold touched his forehead ; it seemed 
to be snow; then warm drops fell, which were 
tears. He opened his eyes; he was in his mother's 
arms. Little Jens was crying over him and kissing 
him. His father and Hunding's sons were stand- 
ing with folded arms, gazing joyously at him. 




ANSWERED RIDDLE JINGLES. 



teBen s l6ottpif)e carder? 
^^ounlitWe,sfu»| 
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s§pa <j>e^e one 1p""rny sisieifg: 
3 sfflo fasten her shsiAw 




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Mild how ao ^ou think he is 

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|e is wr&pJDed in 6, POfbe, 



fffl 



\ evepyDoays eiep 
1 M Msys vtefs his little feet 
oefope ne goes To Work 




>i c\nd 



6, vest 



I jj|n 6, IopJ slender rojxf/f§ 
■nstead or 5. coo.- 

gut fflbcks 6, 6ood fellow, 
® ■ 1 1 

cs such 6, oood fellow g? 



^^^nd if you unwind 
je's such 6, Joodjfe 
I'm sure he wont mind it 



A W A R N I N G . 



[February, 




Mr. Zerubbabel Smyth De Klyn 

Resolved he would write a valentine 

To a maiden he thought both fair and fine. 

1 '11 write it in flowing verse," quoth he; 
Her heart is like ice, but 't will melt for me, 
When I vow that I write on my bended knee." 

He took paper and ink and a new stub pen. 
And to quicken his fancy he counted ten. 
While he made a few flourishes now and then. 

He rolled up his eyes and wrote, "Evermore"; 
Arose and said, as he walked the floor, 
Methinks that with motion my mind will soar." 

Then he thought, " To excitement I seem inclined; 

I 'd better sit down to calm my mind." 

And he whistled for thought as do sailors for wind. 

He patted his brow and he petted his chin. 
With a pensive smile that resembled a grin ; 
He was sure that now he 'd begun to begin. 

He heaved a sigh and scribbled, " My lass"; 
Then mournfully went to watch in the glass 
His feelings over his features pass. 



WIZARD FROST. 



: D0 



He could hear the rat-tat-tat of his heart, 
And almost the thoughts he wished to impart. 
" If I only," said he, " could get a good start ! " 

For inspiration he tore his hair 

And gazed at the ceiling, but naught was there. 

He groaned, " Can this calm be the calm of despair ? 

Thus he wore the hours of the night away, 

But he wrote not a line for Saint Valentine's day — 

For, you see, he had nothing at all to say. 

To the maiden he thought so fair and fine, 
The post brought many a valentine, 
But never a word from Z. S. De Klyn. 




WIZARD FROST. 



By Frank Dempster Sherman. 



WONDROUS things have come to pass 

On my scmare of window-glass : 

Looking in it I have seen 

Grass no longer painted green, — 

Trees whose branches never stir, — 

Skies without a cloud to blur, — 

Birds below them sailing high, — 

Church-spires pointing to the sky. 

And a funny little town 

Where the people, up and down 

Streets of silver, to me seem 

Like the people in a dream. 

Dressed in finest kinds of lace; 

'T is a picture, on a space 

Scarcely larger than the hand, 

Of a tiny Switzerland, 

Which the wizard Frost has drawn 

'Twixt the nightfall and the dawn ; 

Quick, and see what he has done, 

Ere 't is stolen by the sun ! 



254 



THE STORY OF PRINCE F A I R Y F O O T . 



[February, 




A GOOD DAY FOR SKATING. 



THE STORY OF PRINCE FAIRYFOOT. 



Bv Frances Hodgson Burnett. 



Part III. 

"What pool — and what red berries ?" asked 
the second nightingale. 

" Why, my dear," said the first, " is it possible 
you don't know about the pool where the red 
berries grow — the pool where the poor, dear 
Princess Goldenhair met with her misfortune?" 

" Never heard of it," said the second nightingale 
rather crossly. 

"Well," explained the other, "you have to 
follow the brook for a day and three-quarters and 
then take all the paths to the left until you come to 
the pool. It is very ugly and muddy, and bushes 
with red berries on them grow around it." 

"Well, what of that?" said her companion; 
"and what happened to the Princess Golden- 
hair?" 

" Don't you know that, either? " exclaimed her 
friend. 

"No." 

" Ah ! " said the first nightingale, " it was very 
sad. She went out with her father, the King, who 
had a hunting party ; and she lost her way and 
wandered on until she came to the pool. Her poor 
little feet were so hot that she took off her gold- 



embroidered satin slippers, and put them into the 
water, — her feet, not the slippers, — and the next 
minute they began to grow and grow, and to get 
larger and larger, until they were so immense she 
could hardly walk at all ; and though all the physi- 
cians in the kingdom have tried to make them 
smaller, nothing can be done, and she is perfectly 
unhappy." 

•' What a pity she does n't know about this 
pool !" said the other bird. "If she just came 
here and bathed them three times in the water, 
they would be smaller and more beautiful than 
ever, and she would be more lovely than she has 
ever been." 

" It is a pity," said her companion ; '" but you 
know if we once let people know what this water 
will do, we should be overrun with creatures bath- 
ing themselves beautiful, and trampling our moss 
and tearing down our rose-trees, and we should 
never have any peace." 

" That is true," agreed the other. 

Very soon after, they flew away, and Fairyfoot 
was left alone. He had been so excited while they 
were talking that he had been hardly able to lie 
still. He was so sorry for the Princess Golden- 
hair, and so glad for himself. Now he could find 



i8S 7 .] 



THE STORY OF PRINCE FAIRYFOOT. 



255 



his way to the pool with the red berries, and he 
could bathe his feet in it until they were large 
enough to satisfy Stumpinghame ; and he could 
go back to his father's court, and his parents would 
perhaps be fond of him. But he had so good a 
heart that he could not think of being happy him- 
self and letting others remain unhappy, when he 
could help them. So the first thing was to find 
the Princess Goldenhair, and tell her about the 
nightingales' fountain. But how was he to find 
her? The nightingales had not told him. He 
was very much troubled, indeed. How was he to 
find her? 

Suddenly, quite suddenly, he thought of the 
ring Gauzita had given him. When she had given 
it to him she had made an odd remark. 

" When you wish to go anywhere," she had said, 
"hold it in your hand, turn around twice with 
closed eyes, and something queer will happen." 

He had thought it was one of her little jokes, 
but now it occurred to him that at least he might 
try what would happen. So he rose up, held the 
ring in his hand, closed his eyes, and turned 
around twice. 

What did happen was that he began to walk, 
not very fast, but still passing along as if he were 
moving rapidly. He did not know where he was 
going, but he guessed that the ring did, and that 
if he obeyed it, he should find the Princess Golden- 
hair. He went on and on, not getting in the least 
tired, until about daylight he found himself under 
a great tree, and on the ground beneath it was 
spread a delightful breakfast which he knew was 
for him. He sat down and ate it, and then got 
up again and went on his way once more. Before 
noon he had left the forest behind him and was in 
a strange country. He knew it was not Stump- 
inghame, because the people had not large feet. 
But they all had sad faces, and once or twice, when 
he passed groups of them who were talking, he 
heard them speak of the Princess Goldenhair, as 
if they were sorry for her and could not enjoy 
themselves while such a misfortune rested upon 
her. 

" So sweet, and lovely, and kind a princess! " 
they said ; "and it really seems as if she would 
never be any better." 

The sun was just setting when Fairyfoot came 
in sight of the palace. It was built of white marble 
and had beautiful pleasure-grounds about it, but 
somehow there seemed to be a settled gloom in 
the air. Fairyfoot had entered the great pleas- 
ure-garden and was wondering where it would be 
best to go first, when he saw a lovely white fawn, 
with a golden collar around its neck, come bound- 
ing over the flower-beds, and he heard, at a little 
distance, a sweet voice saying sorrowfully, "Come 



back, my fawn ; I can not run and play with you 
as once I used to. Do not leave me, my little 
friend." 

And soon from behind the trees came a line of 
beautiful girls, walking two by two, all very slowly ; 
and at the head of the line, first of all, came the 
loveliest princess in the world, dressed softly in 
pure white, with a wreath of lilies on her long 
golden hair, which fell almost to the hem of her 
white gown. 

She had so fair and tender a young face, and her 
large, soft eyes yet looked so sorrowful, that Fairy- 
foot loved her in a moment, and he knelt on one 
knee, taking off his cap and bending his head un- 
til his own golden hair almost hid his face. 

"Beautiful Princess Goldenhair, beautiful and 
sweet Princess, may I speak to you ? " he said. 

The princess stopped and looked at him, and 
answered him softly. It surprised her to see one 
so poorly dressed kneeling before her, in her 
palace-gardens, among the brilliant flowers ; but 
she always spoke softly to every one. 

" What is there that I can do for you, my 
friend? " she said. 

" Beautiful Princess, "answered Fairyfoot, blush- 
ing, " I hope very much that I may be able to do 
something for you." 

"For me!" she exclaimed. "Thank you, 
friend ; what is it you can do ? Indeed, I need a 
help I am afraid no one can ever give me." 

" Gracious and fairest lady," said Fairyfoot, " it 
is that help, I think — nay, I am sure — that I 
bring to you." 

" Oh ! " said the sweet princess. " You have a 
kind face and most true eyes, and when I look at 
you, — I do not know why it is, but I feel a little 
happier. What is it you would say to me ? " 

Still kneeling before her, still bending his head 
modestly, and still blushing, Fairyfoot told his 
story. He told her of his own sadness and lone- 
liness, and of why he was considered so terrible 
a disgrace to his family. He told her about the 
fountain of the nightingales and what he had 
heard there, and how he had journeyed through 
the forest, and beyond it into her own country, to 
find her. And while he told it, her beautiful face 
changed from red to white, and her hands closely 
clasped themselves together. 

" Oh ! " she said when he had finished, " I know 
that this is true, from the kind look in your eyes. 
And I shall be happy again. And how can I thank 
you for being so good to a poor little princess 
whom you had never seen ? " 

" Only let me see you happy once more, most 
sweet Princess," answered Fairyfoot, " and that 
will be all I desire — only if, perhaps, I might 
once — kiss vour hand." 




She held out her hand to him with so lovely a 
look in her soft eyes that he felt happier than he 
had ever been before, even at the fairy dances. 
This was a different kind of happiness. Her hand 
was as white as a dove's wing and as soft as a 
dove's breast. '' Come," she said ; "let us goat 
once to the King." 

Within a few minutes the whole palace was in 
an uproar of excitement. Preparations were made 
to go to the fountain of the nightingales imme- 
diately. Remembering what the birds had said 
about not wishing to be disturbed, Fairyfoot asked 
the King to take only a small party. So no one 
was to go but the King himself, the Princess, in a 
covered chair carried by two bearers, the Lord High 
Chamberlain, two Maids of Honor, and Fairyfoot. 

Before morning they were on their way ; and the 
day after, they reached the thicket of roses, and 
Fairyfoot pushed aside the branches and led the 
way into the dell. 

The Princess Goldcnhair sat down upon the edge 
of the pool, and put her feet into it. In two min- 
utes, they began to look smaller. She bathed them 



PRINCESS GOLDENHAIR 



once, twice, three times, and. as the nightingales 
had said, they became smaller and more beautiful 
than ever. As for the Princess herself, she really 
could not be more beautiful than she had been ; 
but the Lord High Chamberlain, — who had been 
an exceedingly ugly old gentleman, — after wash- 
ing his face, became so young and handsome that 
the first Maid of Honor immediately fell in love 
with him. Whereupon she washed her face, and 
became so beautiful that he fell in love with her, 
and they were engaged upon the spot. 

The Princess could not find any words to tell 
Fairyfoot how grateful she was and how happy. 
She could only look at him again and again with 
her soft, radiant eyes, and again and again give him 
her hand that he might kiss it. 

She was so sweet and gentle that Fairyfoot could 
not bear the thought of leaving her ; and when the 
King begged him to return to the palace with them 
and live there always, he was more glad than I can 
tell you. To be near this lovely Princess, to be 
her friend, to love and serve her and look at her 
every day was such happiness that he wanted 




THE MARRIAGE 



i38 7 .] 



THE STORY OF PRINCE FAIRYFOOT. 



z 57 







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FROM THE FOUNTAIN OF THE NIGHTINGALES. 



nothing more. But first he wished to visit his 
father and mother and sistersand brothers in Stump- 
inghame ; so the King and Princess and then- 
attendants went with him to the pool where the 
red berries grew ; and after he had bathed his 
feet in the water, they were so large that Stump- 
inghame contained nothing like them, even the 
King's and Queen's seeming small in comparison. 
And when, a few days later, he arrived at the 
Stumpinghame Palace, attended in great state by 
the magnificent retinue with which the father of 
the Princess Goldenhair had provided him, he was 
received with unbounded rapture by his parents. 
The King and Queen felt that to have a son with 
feet of such a size was something to be proud of, 
indeed. They could not admire him sufficiently, 
although the whole country was illuminated and 
feasting continued throughout his visit. 

But though he was glad to be no longer a dis- 
grace to his family, it can not be said that he en- 
joyed the size of his feet very much on his own 
account. Indeed, he much preferred being Prince 
Fairyfoot, as fleet as the wind and as light as a 
young deer, and he was quite glad to go to the 



fountain of the nightingales after his visit was at 
an end, and bathe his feet small again, and to re- 
turn to the palace of the Princess Goldenhair with 
the soft and tender eyes. There every one loved 
him, and he loved every one, and was four times as 
happy as the day is long. 

He loved the Princess more dearly every day, and 
of course, as soon as they were old enough, they 
were married. And of course, too, they used to 
go in the summer to the forest and dance in the 
moonlight with the fairies, who adored them both. 

When they went to visit Stumpinghame, they 
always bathed their feet in the pool of the red 
berries; and when they returned, they made them 
small again in the fountain of the nightingales. 

They were always great friends with Robin Good- 
fellow, and he was always very confidential with 
them about Gauzita, who continued to be as pretty 
and saucy as ever. 

" Some of these days," he used to say severely, 
'T '11 marry another fairy, and see how she '11 like 
that — to see some one else basking in my society ! 
/ '// get even with her ! " 

But he never did. 



THE END. 




-'■ -> -■■• s^fijffft ,'. ■ ■■--,,,, .A'V 



• ■:- '-\. ^ I ' 'K ~ ■ ■'■- 



OF PRINCE FAIRYFOOT AND PRINCESS GOLDENH Alii. 

Vor,. XIV.— 17. 



2 5 8 



EFFIE S REALISTIC NOVEL. 



[February, 



EFFIE'S REALISTIC NOVEL. 



By Alice Wellington Rollins. 



"Mamma, I don't see why I could n't write a 
novel, now that it is the fashion to put into novels 
just the plain things that everybody sees every 
day. You know we have been studying recent 
literature in Miss Owen's class at school, and it 
seems as if it would be ever so easy to write a story 
like those Mr. Howells writes." 

" But why do you try to make a novel out of it, 
Effie? Perhaps you would not find it quite so easy 
after all. Why not take just a simple story? " 

" Why, Mamma, a realistic novel is just a simple 
story. That 's why I like it, and why I think I can 
do it. It 's just an account of what real people do 
every day of their lives, and you don't have to in- 
vent anything at all. It 's very absurd, Mr. How- 
ells says, to put troubadours and knights and all 
sorts of unnatural adventures into a story nowa- 
days. People are tired of such things." 

"Well, but what will it be, Effie ? A love 
story? " 

" No; I think not a love story." 

" How are you going to write a novel without a 
love story in it? " 

" Why, Mamma, that 's just it again ! A realis- 
tic novel does n't have to have lovers. Indeed, it 
must n't have lovers. All that sort of thing is very 
old-fashioned in a novel." 

"But, Effie," objected Lilian, Effie's older sister, 
" I 'm quite sure Mr. Howells has lovers in his. 
Why, don't you remember, one of his stories was 
called ' Their Wedding Journey,' and I think 
somebody is always married in all of them." 

" Well," said Effie, thoughtfully, " I '11 tell you 
how I think it is : You can have people engaged 
and married, if you can't think of anything better 
for them to do, only you must n't make a great 
fuss about it. There must n't be all sorts of objec- 
tions from the parents, and they must n't turn 
pale with passion, and rave at each other in son- 
nets, and all that sort of thing. They must just 
get engaged sensibly and then go and get married, 
the way people really do." 

" But what will you have your heroine do. if 
she does n't fall in love or get married ? " 

"I don't know yet; I have n't made up my 
mind ; but I think I shall have her go into a con- 
vent." 

" Oh, Effie ! Mr. Howells would n't do that. 
He would n't use a convent at all ! " 

"Why not? There are convents. It is per- 
fectly realistic to take things that really do exist." 



"But then there are so few convents; and 
comparatively few girls go into them nowadays. 
I think, if you are going to be realistic, you will 
have to tell just what the average girl, and not 
the exceptional girl, does." 

"Oh, well; of course there are lots of other 
things she can do," said Effie. "I only happened 
to think of a convent just then." 

A few days afterward, Effie brought her first 
chapter to her mother. 

" The name of the novel is ' Margaret P. Whar- 
ton,' " she explained. " Don't you think it was 
very realistic, Mamma, to put in that 'P'? They 
don't generally, you know. They just call their 
heroine ' Margaret Wharton,' or ' Helen Rains- 
ford,' or ' Priscilla Remington ' ; but real girls al- 
most always have an initial, so I put one in." 

" And what made you decide on a ' P ' ? " asked 
Papa, who was supposed to be reading the paper, 
but who was evidently listening. 

"Why, because her middle name was Patter- 
son ! " answered Effie, promptly. "You would n't 
have me put in an ' A ' or a 'G ' or an ' R,' would 
you, to stand for Patterson ? " 

" Not for worlds," answered Papa, gravely. 
" But, you see, I did n't know it was Patterson, 
and in a realistic novel you ought not to leave any- 
thing to the imagination. I might have supposed, 
you know, that her middle name was Porter or 
Prentice. But go on, my dear." 

" ' Margaret Wharton was not what you would 
call a beauty,' " read Effie from her manuscript. 

" Wait a minute, Effie; you forgot the ' P.' " 

" Oh, well, Papa," exclaimed Effie, impatiently, 
' • of course you don't have to put in the ' P ' every 
time. ' Margaret Wharton was not what you 
would call a beauty.' You see, Papa," she ex- 
plained. " in a realistic novel you must never go 
to extremes about anything. In the old-fashioned 
stories the heroine was always perfectly beautiful ; 
but real girls are not perfectly beautiful, and so I 
could n't let Margaret Wharton " 

"With a 'P,' Effie, " 

" be as handsome as I should have liked to 

make her. ' Margaret Wharton,' " she began 
again, " ' was not what you would call a beauty. 
Yet there was something singularly attractive 
about her.' " 

" Her clothes ? " inquired Papa. But Effie con- 
tinued, without deigning to notice the interrup- 
tion — "'Her hair, which was of the most beauti- 



E F Fit S REALISTIC NOVEL. 



-59 



ful golden color, waved over her forehead in 
little, short, lovely curls ; while at the back 
it was coiled into a shining knot that seemed 
to have caught the sunbeams and imprisoned 
them in its toils. Her eyes, which were gloriously 
black in color, were full of infinite expression and 
dreamy loveliness, enhanced in effect by the beau- 
tifully arched eyebrows, and by the long lashes 
that swept a cheek almost marble in its pallor, 
yet tinged at times with rosy blushes, like an ex- 
quisitely tinted shell.' " 

" And her nose ? " inquired Papa. 

"I have n't come to her nose yet," answered 
Effie with dignity. " ' Her dainty little ears 
peeped out from her luxuriant tresses as if they 
wanted to hear the pretty things people were sure 
to say about so lovely a face ' " 

" Brava, Effie!" interrupted Papa, clapping 
his hands. "That 's capital! — even if it is n't 
realistic," he added, under his breath. 

" ' while the pure, sweet mouth, arched in 

the most exquisite curves, hid from view teeth 
that were like a row of shining pearls.' " 

" How do you know they were like pearls, Effie, 
if they were hid from view ? " Papa suggested. 

"' Her complexion,' " continued Effie, undis- 
mayed, " ' was of the purest rose and white, while 
her graceful head was poised on a throat like that 

of a swan. Her ' Oh, dear ! " interrupted the 

young author, looking helplessly at her manu- 
script, "I do believe 1 forgot her nose after all ; 
I 'm so glad you reminded me of it. I can slip 
it in right here. Give me a pencil, please. ' Her 
nose ' " 

"Is that her nose?" inquired Papa, pointing 
to the A vv 'ith which Effie was inserting her new 
sentence about the nose. 

" ' Her nose,' " repeated Effie, with a glance of 
terrible scorn at her father, " ' was of the purest 
Grecian type ; while over all her exquisite features 
floated an expression of dreamy thought; of ten- 
der charm, which added tenfold to their inexpres- 
sible loveliness.' " 

" Quite a pretty girl," murmured Papa, " for 
one who was not a beauty." 

"Yes," said Effie, complacently. "She was 
pretty. There 's no harm in her being pretty, 
you know, for lots of real girls are ever so pretty. 
And you could n't expect me to make a heroine 
out of an ugly old poke." 

"Certainly not," said Papa with emphasis. 
" And now I understand the full significance of the 
' P ' in the middle of her name ; it is to remind us 
that she was only Pretty, and not Beautiful, if we 
are in danger of forgetting it after your descrip- 
tion." 

"But, Effie," said her mother, " I don't think 



realistic people talk much about tresses when they 
mean hair." 

"And /don't think," said Lilian, emphatically, 
" that they ever describe people at all. I 'm sure 
Mr. Howells does n't. He never tells you how 
people look, or what they wear; he just begins 
and goes right ahead with letting them do some- 
thing." 

"Oh, no, no, indeed, Lilian!" answered Effie, 
with full confidence that here, at least, she had 
unanswerable arguments for her methods. " That 
is just exactly what he does n't do. All the critics 
say so. Mr. Howells's people never do anything. 
Why, Miss Owen told us that was the great objec- 
tion that many people made to his work ; that 
there is so little action in it, and his characters 
never seem to be doing anything in particular." 

" What do they do, if they don't do anything?" 
inquired Papa. 

" I said they did n't do anything in particular. 
They don't stab villains, nor jump overboard, nor 
get into railway accidents, nor have to marry a rich 
man they hate, to save their father's fortune, nor 
do all sorts of things that nobody ever really did 
do — except in the old-fashioned novels." 

" Well, is n't it time, by the way, that we found 
out what Miss Margaret P. was doing? That will 
give us the right clew, perhaps. What was your 

realistic heroine doing, Effie, with her beaut , I 

mean her pretty complexion and her bright eyes ? " 

"She was walking down Beacon street." 

"Ah! that sounds more like it. On the right 
side, or the left side ? " 

"On the right side, of course, Papa; nobody 
ever walks on the left side of Beacon street, going 
down." 

" I see. In the old-fashioned novel, Margaret 
would have walked on the left side of the street, 
and so, by her eccentricity, at once have excited a 
suspicion that she was about something unusual, 
which must not be in the modern work of art. 
Go on, my dear; this is very interesting. Why 
was this pretty girl walking down Beacon street 
on the right side, that lovely day ? By the 
way, Effie, I am assuming that it was a lovely day 
because Miss Margaret was out ; but is it well to 
leave even so much as that to our imagination ? 
Ought you not to say, briefly but unmistakably, 
that it was a lovely day ?" 

" I 'm coming to that," said Effie, apologetically. 
"But there is one more paragraph first. 'Her 
dress was of the costliest velvet, made simply but 
elegantly, and looped most gracefully at the back.' 
Don't you remember, Lilian, how nicely Mr. How- 
ells always describes the way girls loop up their 
overskirts?" asked Effie, interrupting herself for 
sake of the sympathy she felt sure of at last. 



260 



EFFIE S REALISTIC NOVEL. 



[February, 



"Ye-s," said Lilian, doubtfully. "But your 
description does n't seem just like his. I think it 's 
because you describe the wrong thing i you de- 
scribe the velvet, and he described the looping." 

" But, of course, I could n't say just the same 
thing he did. could I ?" 

" N-o ; but, you see, Mr. Howells is always so 
funny." 

•' Well, don't you think what I said about her 
little ears listening to hear what people said about 
her face was funny ? " 

"Yes, of course, it was funny; but then, you 
see, it was n't very funny." 

"And it ought not to be!" said Effie, trium- 
phantly. " Nothing in a realistic novel ought to be 
very anything. You must never go to extremes. 
If it 's a little funny, that 's enough. Now I shall 
go on. ' Around her neck she wore the costliest 
fur; her little hands were cased in the dainti- 
est gloves to be had at Hovey's . ' I think 

Hovey's makes it very realistic, don't you, Papa ? — 
' while a long and dainty feather curled lovingly 
around her little hat, as if it liked to be there.' " 

" I 'm very glad she wore only a feather in her 
hat," replied Effie's father, adding. " though a 
severe critic might object that a realistic girl 
usually wears the whole bird. I am more than 
ever persuaded that it was an exceedingly fim: 
clay ; still, Effie, don't you think it is time you told 
us something about the weather ? I infer, from 
there being no mention of an umbrella in Miss 
Wharton's very complete outfit, that it was not 
raining; still, in a realistic novel, nothing ought 
to require an effort of the imagination." 

" I am just coming to that, Papa. 'It was a 
lovely afternoon, towards the close of July. ' " 

"July! Why. I thought she had on furs?" 

" Oh clear, so she had ! I must have the furs. 

so I '11 just change July to January — they both 

begin with a J — 'It was a lovely afternoon near 

the close of January. A splendid sunset glowed in 

' the west ' " 

" Did you ever know a sunset to glow in the 
east?" 

"Oh, Papa! what a terrible critic you are! ! 
don't believe you like Mr. Howells's style." 

"Oh, yes, I like Mr. Howells's style very 
much ; but this does n't seem exactly in his style. 
For instance, Mr. Howells never speaks of sun- 
sets." 

" But, Papa, a sunset is just as real as a person. 
There are sunsets; it is n't anything I invented 
out of my own head." 

" I know there are sunsets, and I have no doubt 
Mr. Howells likes a real genuine sunset to look at, 
very much : but he does n't think sunsets belong 
to fiction. They are to look at, not to read about. 



Now I should n't wonder if you had a page or two 
there about the sunset." 

" Yes, there are three pages of it, and it is just 
lovely ! . And I thought it must be realistic because 
it is a description of the very sunset you and I saw 
last summer at Mount Desert." 

" But do you think a sunset at Mount Desert in 
August would be likely to be very similar to the 
sunsets on Beacon street in January?" 

"Oh, dear! Then I might as well give it up. 
But, Papa, what do you suppose Mr. Howells 
would have said if he had been writing this story ?" 

"Well. I have n't a very clear idea as yet of 
your plot and general scope ; but I should say, 
with what material you have exhibited as yet, Mr. 
Howells would have said just about this: 'Near 
five o'clock on a pleasant afternoon in January, 
Miss Margaret Wharton was walking on Beacon 
street.' " 

" But, Papa, how does he ever fill up a whole 
novel with such short sentences as that? " 

"Ah, there is his art ! It is very easy to say 
what Mr. Howells does n't put in ; but it is n't so 
easy to say in advance what he does." 

"Well," said Effie, with a sigh, "I don't see 
but it 's just as hard to be realistic as it is to be 
artistic. I shall give up my novel, and try a story 
of adventure." 

" But don't leave Margaret P. Wharton in the 
lurch quite yet, Effie. All I know about her so far 
is that she was n't a beauty, though she wore ele- 
gant clothes ; but, as you say, there is something 
singularly attractive about her, and I want to find 
out what it is. What were you going to have her 
do? Was it a case for ' aspirations' ? " 

" I was n't going to have her do anything. 
In realistic novels, people don't have aspirations. 
Or, if they do have them," with a sudden recol- 
lection, " they don't amount to anything. I was 
just going to let her go to some teas and theatri- 
cals, and perhaps try to do a little artistic work, 
or something, and find she could n't " 

" But is n't that very discouraging to your read- 
ers, Effie ? " 

" Yes, of course it 's discouraging ; but, then, it 
ought to be discouraging. In real life, people 
don't find they can do everything they desire ; 
and it is very silly to do as the old-fashioned nov- 
elists did, and represent heroes and heroines as 
accomplishing everything they undertake without 
any trouble at all, and undertaking, too, the most 
unheard-of and difficult things. I w-as just go- 
ing to let my heroine go to Mount Desert in the 
summer, and to Washington in the winter, and 
put in a few clever little sketches of society life, 
and then stop. A realistic novel does n't have to 
come to a climax, you know." 



EKFIE S REALISTIC NOVEL. 



201 



" But what do you know yet about society, 
Effie ? And how can you write about Washington 
when you have never been there ? Would n't that 
require too much imagination for an author who 
means to be purely realistic ? " 

" No ; because, you see, the things I should 
imagine would be real. I should n't invent drag- 
ons and duels and knights and talismans, and all 
sorts of things that never existed " 

" Oh, but, Effie ! " interrupted Lilian, " knights 
and duels did exist once." 

" Yes, once ; but they were never very common, 
and they were never worth writing about anyhow. 
It 's perfectly proper to invent things, because, of 
course, our imagination is a real thing, too, and it 
must be meant for something ; only we must in- 
vent things just like those we see every day." 

" Then I don't see where the invention corner 
in," remarked Lilian, promptly. "I don't think 
it takes much imagination to write about a girl's 
going to a tea ; and, as you say, it seems to me 
we were meant to use our imagination for some- 
thing." 

" I '11 come to your help, Effie, this time," said 
her father. " It 's all right about using our im- 
agination for common things ; only you make a 
mistake in thinking that imagination is inventing 
things. Imagination is not inventing things ; it is 
seeing things ; but it is seeing things that are out 
of sight — it is seeing intellectual and spiritual 
things, just as the eye sees really visible things." 

" Then, Papa," said Effie, triumphantly, " you 
ought not to have found fault with my imagina- 
tion when I said Margaret Wharton's teeth were 
like pearls. They were 'hid from view,' but I 
could see with my imagination perfectly well what 
they were like." 

" Quite true ; audi didn't find fault with you 
for telling us they were like pearls. I only said 
that, from your own point of view, you ought not to 
tell us, because you said when you started out 
that you were only going to describe what you 
saw. I think you will find out, as you go on, that 
it requires a great deal more imagination to write 
a realistic novel than to write a fairy-tale ; because 
the object of a realistic story is not to repeat com- 
mon things, but to interest people in common 
things; not to create uncommon things, but to 
show people that common things are not by any 
means so uninteresting as they seem at first sight. 
The realistic writer must see, not new things, but 
new qualities in things ; and to do that, he must 
have plenty of imagination. He must understand 
not only what his heroine's teeth are like, though 
they are ' hid from view,' but what her thoughts 
are like, though they also are hid from view. This 
is the difference, Effie : those whom you call the 



' old-fashioned writers ' imagined that they must 
describe the thoughts and looks and clothes and 
actions of a princess, or some creature out of the 
range of every-day life ; but the realistic writers 
have discovered that the thoughts and clothes and 
looks and actions of a little beggar-girl can be 
made just as interesting to people, if only you can 
see what is unseen about them with your mind's 
eye. Now. which would you say had really the 
nobler imagination — a man who went into his 
library and wrote a remarkable poem about the 
golden apples of the Hesperides, that were pure 
creations of his fancy, or Sir Isaac Newton when 
he went and sat down under a common apple- 
tree, and set his imagination to work to find out 
what made the apple fall to the ground ? The 
realistic writer is satisfied with the every-day apple- 
tree — that is quite certain ; but here is your mis- 
take about him. Effie : He is n't satisfied with 
telling you that the apples fell ; he shows you how 
they fell, and what a great, beautiful, wonderful 
law of the universe caused them to fall ; and he 
makes you feel that the law was all the more 
beautiful and wonderful for not applying merely 
to one particular apple, or even to the whole 
class of apple-trees, but to everything." 

"Only that sounds, Papa, as if the realists went 
into long and elaborate paragraphs about things, 
and I 'm sure they don't. They never stop long 
enough to talk about a thing, or describe a law; 
they just make you see things, and they always 
seem to be the same old things you have always 
seen before." 

" But with a difference, Effie ; with a difference. 
A little while ago you spoke of one of Mr. Howells's 
heroines who tried to do something and could n't. 
I suppose you mean the poor rich girl who lost all 
her money, and found that all her fine education 
did not help her a bit when it came to earning her 
fixing. Now if Mr. Howells had merely meant by 
that to show girls how absurd it was for them to 
try to do anything, it would have been a very cruel 
story ; but I think he merely meant to show the 
parents what scrappy sort of education they were 
giving their daughters, with all the money they 
were spending for it." 

"But don't you think you are very cruel to me 
now. Papa, when I am trying to do something, and 
you are doing all you can to discourage me ? " 

"You said a little while ago, Effie, that it was 
a good thing to discourage people ; that that was 
what the realistic novel was for." 

Effie smiled through her tears. 

"But only to discourage people from expecting 
too fine results. Papa ; not to discourage them from 
trying." 

"And I don't wish to discourage vou from try- 



262 



THE PORCELAIN STOVE. 



[February, 



ing. Only I wish you to try the right thing. 
When I said a common apple-tree was better than 
the Hesperides, I did n't mean to deny that the 
Hesperides are good in their way. I like realistic 
novels, really realistic novels, very much ; but I 
like wholly imaginative stories too ; and I think 
those pretty and delicate touches of yours about 
Margaret Wharton's little ears listening to what 
people said about her face, and the little feather 
that curled around her hat as if it liked to be there, 



show that you have a genuine gift at fancy ; and if 
I were you, I would n't despise fancy, for it is 
really a very good trait in an author." 

So it .happened that next day at recess, Effie in- 
formed her friends : 

" I 've given up my novel, and I 'm just going to 
try fairy-tales." And she added, with a little sigh, 
" Papa says that I may write very good fairy-tales, 
but that I have n't imagination enough to be a 
realistic writer." 



THE PORCELAIN STOVE. 

i 

By Avery McAlpine. 




?^S&§>VjC<g? 



Part I. 

IERE was once a lit- 
tle boy by the name 
of Hans, who lived 
with his father — 
whose name also was 
Hans — in a small 
house in the Black 
Forest. This forest 
is in Germany, and 
it is called " black" 
because the trees 
have very black 
trunks and branches, and because they stand so 
near together that even on a bright day it is dark 
in the forest, and one always feels, when one is 
there, as though the night were coming on. 

In this forest dwell many poor peasants who are 
able to make enough money to furnish themselves 
with black bread and a coarse kind of cheese, by 
carving all kinds of curious things out of wood. 

Often these wood-carvers are very good artists; 
for they all, from father to son, learn to use their 
knives as they sit by their firesides during the 
long, dark, winter evenings; and by that flickering 
light they shape many wonderful and beautiful 
figures. 

Thus had the little boy Hans sat night after 
night by his father's side, fashioning wood into 
odd shapes and giving to the figures which he 
made more of reality than ever his father could 
give, though he had worked at the craft for many- 
long years. 

Little Hans could scarcely remember his delicate 
mother. She had found the Black Forest too dark 
and drear for her southern brightness, and when 



he was a very little child, she had given Hans her 
last kiss, and gone where the sun always shines. 

Thus the father and son had become inseparable 
companions. 

Hans knew that they had not always been so 
poor; that sometime — ever so long before — his 
father had been young like himself; that at that 
time his father had lived a long way off in a village 
of many houses — perhaps forty altogether; that 
there was a church, and a grand castle on the hill, 
and that very grand people lived therein ; that his 
father's father had lived in one of the houses 
belonging to the castle, and had been the trusted 
steward of the lord of the castle. All this and 
much more had Hans often heard, for his father 
loved to talk of those good old times: and often the 
elder Hans did not know when his little son had 
gone quite asleep in front of the fire, or had stolen 
off to the shelf in the wall, which he called his bed. 

But there was one story that never lost its inter- 
est for little Hans, that could arouse him even 
after the first sleepy nods, and that was the story 
of the porcelain stove. The porcelain stove was 
the only relic of " those better days," of which they 
loved to talk, that his father had been able to 
keep ; but in spite of want, almost of suffering, 
he had never been willing to part with the por- 
celain stove. 

It was large and beautiful. So large that it 
quite touched their humble ceiling, and it was of a 
design so rare that many a time an artist or trav- 
eler, who had stopped to buy some curiously 
carved wooden image and had espied this stove in 
its poor surroundings, had offered to buy it from 
Father Hans for a good round sum. 

But, no! — The thought of his boyhood and 
his old home, with its comforts and associations, 



THE PORCELAIN STOVE. 



263 



always prevented him from parting" with this 
curious heirloom. 

Many an hour had little Hans stood before this 
great white stove, with its pictures of beautiful 
women and gallant gentlemen, with its scenes of 
country life and city fashion, and had woven for 
himself wonderful fancies that seemed to make the 
painted people live. 

He would play that he was the gay "milord "in 
powdered wig, lace ruffles, satin coat and waistcoat ; 
and then he would imagine what the fair dame was 
saying, who, in hoop and stately satin, received 
with so much grace and condescension her fan 
from milord's taper fingers. 

There was one other picture that claimed even 
more of Hans's attention than did the gallant lords 
and dainty ladies, and that was one of a deep green 
forest. There he saw trees such as he had known 
ever since his eyes had opened upon the real forest. 
There was the very sunlight falling aslant the 
black tree-trunks, just as Hans had often seen it 
shine before it disappeared altogether on their 
longest summer days. What could make him 
feel the warmth of the sunlight, and yet, when he 
put his hand upon it, was after all only some color 
laid on a cold porcelain stove ? 

Much did the boy marvel, and always the mys- 
tery was unsolved. Hans wondered what the 
world could be like outside the Black Forest, and 
above all where did the wonderful artists live who 
could on cold porcelain make glow such living 
pictures. 

All the artistic nature within the child grew and 
developed, as he gazed and longed for the secret 
by which he, too, could create like marvels. 

He knew that there was something within him 
that could not find its full expression with only 
his knife and a block of wood for tools. He could 
carve a leaf with all its delicate veinings and won- 
derful variety of indentation ; but how could he 
produce the tree with its branches clothed in myr- 
iad leaves, all fluttering, and dipping, and turning, 
as the wind swayed and rocked the branches ? 

Well he knew that there was a way to express 
even the ever-changing light that played upon the 
mosses that grew, a soft carpet, under his feet. 

All these thoughts and longings did Hans keep 
shut up within his own breast; for how could his 
father, who toiled each day to provide their bread, 
and who looked upon wood-carving only as a 
means to this end — how could he understand what 
the child only knew, as he knew some of the 
legends of the forest, to dream over and yet to 
doubt their reality. 

Often had the lad tried to find out some of the 
wonders of the great world from his father ; but 
the reply was always, "What has that to do with 



thee, my child ? There is no need for thee to 
know aught but how to earn thy bread — and what 
have we poor peasants to do with cities and grand 
folk, unless it be to carve so well that some of 
their good gold will come to us and keep the 
'angry wolf from the door?" 

And thus the child grew until the age of ten — 
in his mind living the life the pictures made for 
him, and in his real life suffering privation and 
distress. 

Often, when on summer nights some neighbors 
lingered to speak a word to his father, he would 
hear them say : 

" Of what use is it to thee to keep a great stove 
like that ? " 

" It might bring thee fifty marks, and then no 
more wouldst thou have to give thy boy only half 
enough black bread." 

"Who of us can keep anything for remem- 
brance, that can he turned into honest marks?" 

All this did Hans hear and remember, too, al- 
though no one dreamed that he cared for the 
porcelain stove. 

At last came a very severe winter, the frost keep- 
ing the peasants housed, and with scant provision. 

Hans the father kept on carving wooden figures, 
and Hans the child had the best of their scanty 
fare. It was a cruel winter for the poor. Ger- 
many will long remember it. 

One day there came a traveler who was walking 
through the forest, for even in those days of frost 
and cold there would be now and then a traveler 
who would stop with them for rest and refreshment. 

He talked much, as he ate the good luncheon he 
had brought in his wallet, and examined with in- 
terest the carvings of father and son. At length he 
asked why one who seemed so poor should possess 
so beautiful and rare a stove? 

The story was told, and with many sighs the 
father said he feared the time had come when he 
must part with it. 

" Run, Hans, to the loft ! " he said, " and carve 
thy block of wood until I call thee." 

The boy climbed the ladder, but he had heard 
too much not to wish to hear more, and so he laid 
himself down near the door, with his block of 
wood in his hand, indeed, but with his knife quite 
idle by his side. 

He could hear the stranger speak of a great 
artist in a distant city who would gladly give a 
large sum for a stove so rare and well preserved. 

He heard his father's reply : 

"The parting would be like a farewell spoken 
to a parent or a child ; but necessity conquers the 
poor. We can not guard affection like the rich." 

Then the traveler proposed to have the stove 
removed on a certain day, and reluctantly the poor 



264 



THE PORCELAIN STOVE. 



[February, 



carver gave his consent. The bargain was made. 
But little did the father think of the dreams pass- 
ing and forming in his child's mind. 

Inspired only by his love for beautiful things, 
and his desire to learn from a master, somewhere, 
how to create pictures as lovely as those upon the 
stove, this was the plan the boy formed — to travel, 
unknown to any one, inside of the stove, all the 
way to the artist who had bought it, and to beg 
the master to take him and teach him to be a 
great painter like himself! 

It was all that Hans could do to prevent himself 
from running to tell his father at once. Never 
before had he kept anything secret from his good 
father. 

Nevertheless, something told him that his father 
would not approve of his plan, and in this way 
he would lose his one chance for getting out into 
the world and becoming a great artist. 

For great he always dreamed of being, could he 
but reach the far city and the master to whom he 
and the stove would belong. 

Part II. 

At last came the seventh night since Hans's 
resolve was taken ; and he knew that the next 
morning the stove would commence its journey. 

He said very little to his father that evening, but 
kissed him more than once before going to his bed 
in the wall. 

He waited quietly until all was still and he could 
hear his father's heavy breathing from his room in 
the loft. Then he arose. Cjuietly he went to the 
door, and pushed it open. He stood for a moment 
almost terror-stricken with the thought of what he 
was about to do. Then he crept softly out to the 
cattle-shed, where he found a bundle of straw. 
With this he returned, and put it inside the stove, 
making as good a bed as he could in the dark. 

Then he brought a part of the loaf left from their 
evening meal, and a little cheese, for he did not 
know how long the journey would be. or how 
hungry he might become. 

These were all his preparations ; and then he 
went once more to bed to wait for the dawn, when 
he knew the carriers would arrive. 

At the faint warning light that comes before the 
dawn, Hans arose. As he passed his father, he 
could scarcely keep from crying out, " I am 
going from thee, my father ! Dost thou not know 
thy little son is leaving thee ? " But he kept silent, 
and soon crept into the stove, and pulled the door 
shut after him. 

Soon there was the sound of men's heavy tread 
outside, and Hans, the father, arose to let the car- 
riers in, and to see his beloved stove taken from 



its corner, borne out, placed in a cart, and started 
on its long journey. 

Little did he dream of his real loss, as he re- 
turned with downcast look to his poor house. 

The roads were very rough from frost and thaw, 
and little Hans had a wearying ride. 

He could hear from his companions who walked 
by the side of the cart, that this was the first stage 
of the trip. They were then on their way to the 
nearest railway station. Thence the journey would 
be made all the way by train. 

Many conjectures had Hans as to what this part 
of the traveling would be like. He had heard of 
a wonderful machine that could carry people along 
at a great rate, faster than any horse could run ; 
that it could fly over rivers and under mountains, 
and that one need do nothing but sit still and be 
carried. He had often wondered what it could be 
like, and now he was to try it. He was really 
on his way to life in the world! Yet he could 
think of nothing very quietly, or as he used by the 
lire at heme ; for the cart was ever jolting on, and 
but for his straw, Hans would have been badly 
bruised. 

It was getting quite late in the afternoon when 
Hans knew from the conversation of his companions 
that he must be approaching the village where he 
was to be consigned to the train. 

"This turn to the left to avoid the hill and we 
shall be at the station," he overheard from his 
concealment. 

When the cart was brought to a stop near the 
platform, the men once more took hold of the 
stove and lifted it with its weary little occupant to 
its place in the train. 

Before long they were in motion, and Hans 
realized what flying through the air might mean. 
But cramped up in a white porcelain stove, he 
found it a very miserable means of progress. He 
ate a piece of his loaf, however, and from great 
weariness at last fell asleep. 

Some time during the night, while it was still 
perfectly dark, he was awakened by the very ab- 
sence of motion and noise. He opened the stove 
door wide and looked out. All was dark and 
perfectly still. Not a person, not a thing moved. 
Not a voice was heard. Where he was, or what it 
could mean, Hans did not know. And for the 
first time he forgot that he meant to be a great 
artist, and wished himself back in the cottage in 
the Black Forest. Apparently the stove — and 
Hans inside the stove — had been forgotten. 

At last the dawn came, the sun rose. Men 
appeared, talked, and went about their several 
occupations. Trains came whizzing past ; some 
stopping, and some going on, on, as though they 
were indeed fiery monsters. 



s?] 



THE PORCELAIN STOVE. 



26 = 



Hans ate more of his bread, and wondered 
where the city could be to which he was going. 

Late in the afternoon a donkey was fastened by 
a chain to his car, and was led off, down one 
track and up another, until finally, with a loud 
clank, the car was attached to a long train of cars, 
all looking alike. Then, after much bustle and 
confusion, the locomotive 
gave a warning shriek, 
the bell was rung, Hans 
felt the stove once 
more begin to sway as 
it had done the day be- 
fore — and they were off. 
Hans prayed that it 
might not now be far ; 
for his cramped position 
and the want of food were 
giving him a strange 
feeling, which never in 
his life had he felt before. 

On, on, all night long ! 
Sway, sway, and pound, 
pound, over the rails. 
Sometimes the lad dozed 
and dreamed strange, 
fantastic dreams of gro- 
tesque wooden figures 
that could walk and talk ; 
now they were as tall as 
the forest trees and quite 
as black, again they were 
little and gnarled like the 
dwarfs of which he had 
heard. 

Many of the legends 
of the forest came back 
in troubled dreams to his 
wearied brain. 

Then he would awa- 
ken, frightened, and put 
out his hand, and it would 
come in contact with 
something hard and 
cold ; and he would re- 
member the stove, and 



solid foundation, which seemed to be the station 
platform. 

No one paid any regard to the stove, except to 
gaze at it curiously now and then, and no one 
came to claim it. 

Hans felt that he couid not be silent much 
longer — he would have to scream, or jump out 




where he was, and what 
the motion meant. 

He ate the morsel of bread that remained, but 
it was so tiny that he only became hungrier. At 
last he sank down in a half stupor and dreamed 
more fantastic dreams, until he was aroused by the 
train's stopping. 

Hans was in a large station, and many men 
were busily working to clear the train of mer- 
chandise. 

Soon Hans felt the stove lifted and placed on a 



HANS KEPT SILENT, AND SOuN CREPT INTO THE STUVE. 



of the stove, or do something to show he was 
there, or else perish with fatigue. 

When he felt that he could bear no more, he 
heard a man ask : 

"Is this stove for my master. Herr Makart ? '' 
and the station master answered : 

" It is so addressed." 

Then there was a pause, and soon after, four 
men came and carried the stove to a cart. The 



266 



THE PORCELAIN STOVE. 



messenger got up in front, and with a cheerful 
chirrup to his horses, they started on the last stage 
of the journey. 

Up hill and down, through what seemed miles 
and miles to the tired prisoner, they took their 
course. It was not far beyond the city, but to the 
child — poor little artist! — how did he support 
his weariness ? 

At last, a long, straight drive, a sharp turn, and 
the horses are drawn up before a tall, stately villa, 
and Hans heard many voices, but one sweet and 
melodious above the rest. 



lifted him in his strong arms, and soon saw the 
little fellow's eyes open and gaze into his own 
with perfect confidence. 

Then Hans sat up and said : 

" Oh, dear master, do not send me away! I 
have come leagues and leagues from my home in 
the Black Forest to be with you. Will you teach 
me to be a great artist like you, dear master? 
The pictures on the white stove are beautiful, but 
I can learn to paint those for which you will care 
more, if only you will let me live with you. I have 
come all the way in the white stove to be with you." 







• LITTLE HANS SPRANG FROM THE STU 



AND THREW HIMSELF AT THE MASTER S FEET. 



" Oh ! my beautiful stove ! you have come at last ! 
Carry it straight to my studio, that I may look at 
and enjoy it in its place." 

Up stairs the stove was carried — and Hans too, 
wishing all the time that he might be alone with the 
gentle voice, for he felt sure it was the master's. 

At last the stove was placed, the master direct- 
ing, and sometimes laying his hand on the perfect 
work of art. The men were dismissed, and with 
one cry of weariness and appeal for care, little 
Hans sprang from the stove and threw himself at 
the master's feet. 

The master stooped to lift the child, but found 
him quite fainted away. He gave him water, 



The master gave the child one word of promise, 
laid him on the sofa to rest, and then bade his 
servants prepare a room for the " little artist." 

And by this name he was ever afterwards called 
in the Tiouse of the master until many years had 
passed. For Hans's father, when he learned all 
that his son had undergone for the sake of the art 
that he loved, resigned him — not without many 
pangs — into the gentle protection of his famous 
friend. And in later years the father's self-sacrifice 
was well repaid by the son, who had, indeed, be- 
come " great" — greater than he ever dreamed of 
being when as a little child he planned the journey 
in the porcelain stove. 



IF I WERE A BOY. 



267 




By Washington Gladden. 




One cold winter day, not 
long ago, I was sitting in 
the study of a minister, up 
in Connecticut. He is a 
rather sober-faced man, 
but one who knows some- 
thing about boys and girls ; 
and in our talk he told me 
that he had just been giv- 
ing his young friends two 
lectures on these subjects : 
" What I would do if I were 
a Boy," and " What I would 
do if I were a Girl." 

" Capital ! " I said. " Are 
those titles copyrighted ? " 
" No," he answered. 
"Very well," I said; 
"I '11 use them, then, some time." 

" You 're welcome to them," was his reply. 
So that is where I got the hint out of which this 
article has grown. I don't know what my friend 
said to his boys and girls ; no doubt it was sensible 
and kindly counsel ; but he has given me a good 
handle for my talk (and for a talk, as well as for a 
tool, a handle is sometimes very important), and I 
have given him these few words of acknowledg- 
ment, as a royalty on his invention. But I must 
get to work, or you may think that the tool that I 
have fitted to this handle is going to be an auger. 
I suppose that there is not a man alive who ever 
was a boy, nor any woman neither, who never 
was a boy (no, nor any girl, for that matter), 
who is not often thinking (and speaking out the 
thought, too, very often) of what he or she would 
do if he or she were a boy. Men often wish that 
they were boys. There was a song I used to hear 
them sing : "I would I were a Boy again ! " 

That feeling comes over most men very strong- 
ly, now and then. And the reason why men 
sometimes wish that they were boys again is, I 
suppose, that they see many mistakes that they 
made when they were boys, and think that if they 
could try it over again, they could do better — that 
they would shun some of the errors that have 
marred their lives. But, then, if they were boys 
again, they would be nothing but boys, just as 



liable to make mistakes the second time as the first, 
just as ignorant, and just as headstrong. And, for 
my part, after soberly thinking the matter over, 
I have come to the conclusion that I would not try it 
over again if I had the chance. I have made some 
sad mistakes, but the second time I might make sad- 
der ones. If I could take my experience back with 
me to boyhood, if I could start at ten or twelve 
with all or even part of the lessons learned that I 
have spent all these years in learning, then I would 
gladly try it over again. I know that 1 should 
avoid many serious errors, that I should make 
much more of life the second time. It is idle for 
me to think of that ; that can not be. But I be- 
lieve that we are placed together as we are, in 
families and in society, the old and the young to- 
gether, in order that the experience of those who 
are older may be of use to those who are younger. 

Suppose that I have been climbing a certain 
mountain. The paths are blind and wholly un- 
familiar to me, and I meet with several mishaps ; 
losing my way more than once, and having to re- 
trace my steps, but succeeding, at length, in gain- 
ing the summit. On my return, at the foot of the 
mountain I meet vou, and some such conversa- 
tion as this takes place : 

'" Hullo ! Going up the mountain ? " 

'' Yes, sir." 

" Ever climbed it ? " 

" No, sir." 

" Don't know the road then ? " 

"No; but I guess I '11 find it easy enough. 
Lots of people have found the way up, and I 'm 
sure I can." 

"Oh, yes; you '11 find it, I hope. Though, for that 
matter, a great many people have missed it too. 
But, look here ! I can tell you something. You 
keep right on this path, and by and by you '11 
come to a big bowlder, and then the path divides; 
the one that goes to the left looks the best and the 
most direct, but it is n't ; I tried it and it landed 
me in a swamp in which I came near being 
stuck. The right road, then, is the right road." 

" All right ! Thank you ! I '11 remember that." 

" Then just above, half a mile or so, there 's a 
big spruce-tree across the path ; there you must 
turn to the left. I went off to the right and was 



268 



IF I WERE A BO V 



[February, 



lost in the woods, and it was two hours before 1 
found my way back." 

" Thank you ! Big spruce tree across the path ; 
turn to the left. I '11 remember." 

" Yes. And then, when you come to a spring, 
a mile or so further on, — a spring at the root of a 
beech-tree, — don't go straight on past the spring, 
as the path seems to lead you ; turn, there, sharp 
up the bank. It will be something of a scramble, 
but you will strike a better path then that will take 
you up to a view of the South Valley, that they 
all say is the finest view on the mountain. I 
missed it, but you don't want to." 

"No; of course not! Much obliged. Good- 
morning ! " 

" Good-morning ! " 

Such talk as that would be sensible enough, 
would it not ? You would not object in the least 
to having me give you points, in that way, about 
the best path up the mountain. You would take 
my word without hesitation. Well, those of us 
who are a little older have been up the mountain 
of life ahead of you, and we have got out of 
the path now and then, and have learned a great 
deal, by bitter experience, about right turnings 
and wrong turnings, about swamps and thick- 
ets and pitfalls and precipices ; and we sometimes 
feel very anxious to give you, who are now on 
your way up, a few hints from our own experi- 
ence — warnings and directions that we know would 
be of use to you. And, though boys are some- 
times headstrong and conceited, and think they 
know a great deal more about the road than their 
fathers and uncles and grandfathers ever knew, 
vet most of them are sometimes willing to hear 
what we have to say, and are thankful to be told. 
I believe that you are willing, and, therefore, I 
have stopped you for a few minutes at the foot of 
the mountain, to tell you some of the walks that I 
would tit take, and some of the roads that 1 would 
take, if I were going up again. 

I. If, then, I were a boy again, and knew what 
I know now, I would not be quite so positive in my 
opinions as I used to be. Boys generally think 
that they are very certain about many things. 
A boy of fifteen is a great deal more sure of 
what he thinks he knows than is a man of fifty. 
You ask the boy a question and he will answer 
you right off, up and down; he knows all about it. 
Ask a man of large experience and ripe wisdom 
the same question, and he will say, "Well, there 
is much to be said about it. I am inclined, on the 
whole, to think so and so, but other intelligent 
men think otherwise." 

When I was eight years old I traveled from 
Central Massachusetts to Western New York, 
crossing the river at Albany, and going by canal 



from Schenectady to Syracuse. On the canal- 
boat a kindly gentleman was talking to me one 
day, and I mentioned the fact that I had crossed 
the Connecticut River at Albany. How I got it 
in my head that it was the Connecticut River I do 
not know, for I knew my geography very well 
then ; but in some unaccountable way I had it fixed 
in my mind that the river at Albany was the Con- 
necticut, and I called it so. 

" Why," said the gentleman, " that is the Hud- 
son River." 

"Oh, no, sir!" I replied, politely, but firmly. 
"You 're mistaken. That is the Connecticut 
River." 

The gentleman smiled and said no more. I was 
not much in the habit, I think, of contradicting 
my eiders ; but in this matter, I was perfectly sure 
that I was right, and so I thought it my duty to 
correct the gentleman's geography. I felt rather 
sorry for him that he should be so ignorant. One 
day, after I reached home, I was looking over my 
route on the map, and lo ! there was Albany 
standing on the Hudson River, a hundred miles 
from the Connecticut. Then I did not feel half so 
sorry for the gentleman's ignorance as I did for my 
own. I never told anybody that story until 1 
wrote it down on these pages the other day ; but 1 
have thought of it a thousand times, and always 
with a blush for my boldness. Nor was it the 
only time that I was perfectly sure of things that 
really were not so. It is hard for a boy to learn 
that he may be mistaken ; but, unless he is a fool, 
he learns it after a while. The sooner he finds it 
out, the better for him. 

i. If I were a boy, I would not think that I and 
the boys of my time were exceptions to the gen- 
eral rule — a new kind of boys, unlike all who 
have lived before, having different feelings and 
different wants, and requiring to be dealt with 
in different ways. That is a tone which I some- 
times hear boys taking. To be honest, I must 
own that I used to think so myself. 1 was quite 
inclined to reject the counsel of my elders by 
saying to myself, "That may have been well 
enough for boys thirty or fifty years ago, but it 
is n't the thing for me and my set of boys." But 
that was nonsense. The boys of one generation 
are not different from the boys of another genera- 
tion. If we say that boyhood lasts fifteen or six- 
teen years, I have now known three generations 
of boys, some of them city boys and some of 
them country boys, and they all are substantially 
alike — so nearly alike that the old rules of indus- 
try and patience and perseverance and self-control 
are as applicable to one generation as to another. 
The fact is, that what your fathers and teachers 
have found by experience to be good for boys will 



87-1 



IF I \V E K E A B (J Y . 



269 



be good for you ; and what their experience lias 
taught them is bad for boys will be bad for you. 
You are just boys, nothing more nor less. 

3. If I were a boy, I would not speak disrespect- 
fully or contemptuously of or to a woman. Women 
and girls are different from men and boys ; as a rule, 
they are not so strong physically; their ways of 
thinkingand of judging are somewhat different from 
those of men ; but they may be different without be- 
ing inferior. The fact that they are different is no 
reason why you should think of them slightingly 
or treat them rudely. The nobler gentleman he 
is, the less possible it is for a man to think or speak 
disrespectfully of woman. You have read about 
the knights of chivalry and of the honor they 
always paid to women : they had rather far-fetched 
and fantastic ways of showing their respect, but 
the thing they stood up for was the manly thing. 
And if I were a boy, I should want to be a chival- 
rous boy in my treatment of women, and all the 
more if the woman were my sister or my mother. 
Some time or other, my boy, if you live to be an 
old man, you will stand where I have stood, at the 
grave of your mother ; and, if there is any " man " 
in you, you will be sorry then for every word of 
disrespect you have ever spoken of a woman. 

4. For much the same reasons, if I were 
a boy, I would never tease or abuse a smaller 
boy ; ana I would never ridicule any person, male 
or female, old or young, because he or she was 
lame or deformed or homely or awkward or ill- 
dressed, or unfortunate in any way. In fact, I do 
not believe that real boys ever do anything of this 
sort. 

5. Another thing I would be careful about, if 1 
were a boy, would be letting my love of fun lead 
me into trespassing upon other people's rights. 
Boys like a rousing good time, and they ought to 
have it; they enjoy making a noise, and they should 
have plenty of chances to make a noise ; but they 
ought always to be careful lest their rough pleasure 
cause pain to some one else. That, you see, would 
be sheer selfishness. I have seen boys carry bois- 
terous fun into places where everybody but the 
boys wanted it kept orderly and quiet, so that the 
enjoyment of others was spoiled that the boys 
might have a merry time. That is not fair play ; 
and no thoughtful and manly boy will want to 
have his fun at such expense to the feelings of 
others. For this reason and for other reasons, if I 
were a boy, I would never play or whisper in air, 
orderly public assembly, especially in a place of 
worship. I would be quiet and attentive and re- 
spectful always in prayer time, and in every devo- 
tional exercise, because I should remember that 
disorderly behavior at such times is not only irrev- 
erent, but that it is a great trespass upon the rights 



of others, who do not wish to have their attention 
distracted by such disturbances. 

6. If I were a boy, I would not lie. I would 
suffer much before I would tell a falsehood or know- 
ingly make a statement which would convey a false- 
hood. I would take great care not to fall into the 
habit of misstating or overstating the truth — of tell- 
ing big stories. I would feel that the bottom fact of 
character is truthfulness, and that a boy who has 
habits of untruthfulness, who has fallen into the 
way of deceiving or concealing or coloring his state- 
ments, is a boy who needs to put right about, or lie 
will soon be on the rocks. A boy whose word is 
good for nothing is in a very critical condition. He 
would better pull himself together and make up his 
mind very firmly to think twice before he speaks, 
and not to say a word that is not exactly true. 

7. If I were a boy, 1 would not use profane 
words or foul words of any sort. Boys sometimes 
think it smart and manly to use bad language and 
to tell vile stories, but it is not. No gentleman ever 
defiles his lips in that way. 

8. If I were a boy, I would not read such books 
and newspapers as I sometimes see boys reading. 
.Much of this reading furnished for boys is posi- 
tively bad — unclean, immoral, corrupting. lam 
told that books of this character are sometimes 
secreted and read stealthily ; but the misguided 
and foul-minded fellows who could do a thing like 
this are not, I am sure, enrolled among the glori- 
ous company of manly chaps who read ST. NICHO- 
LAS. Many of the books and papers of which I am 
speaking are not vile, as a rule, but they are hurt- 
ful, nevertheless, to the minds and the morals of 
the boys who read them. 1 know boys who have 
read so much flashy fiction that they can not take 
any sober and sensible views of life ; they seem to 
have lost the power to study : they never read 
anything but fiction, and that of the lightest sort; 
the most entertaining book of history or science is 
a bore to them ; their minds are so feeble and so 
feverish that they are wholly unfitted for the work 
of life. If you want to keep your mental grip and 
your moral soundness, never abuse your minds by 
feeding them on this sensational fodder. 

9. If I were a boy, I would not use tobacco in 
any way. There are men who think it right to 
smoke, and I am not going to discuss the question 
as respects men ; but whatever may be said of 
them, there is no intelligent man anywhere, 
whether he himself smokes or does not smoke, 
whether he thinks it right or wrong for men to 
smoke, who does not think it always wrong for a 
boy. It might be right for your father and utterly 
wrong for you. There is a great difference be- 
tween the effects of tobacco upon a growing per- 
son and its effects upon one who has got his 



270 



IF I WERE A BOY. 



[February, 



growth. It hurts a growing boy a great deal 
more than it hurts a grown man. I have my 
doubts whether any one ever uses it habitually 
without being injured by it ; but it is perfectly cer- 
tain — all the doctors agree on this — that it is 
always injurious for boys. Here, for example, is 
the word of one doctor who thinks it no harm 
for some men to use it : " To young persons," he 
says, " under twenty-five years or so, tobacco, even 
in small quantities, is so apt to disorder health, in 
some way or other, that for such it should be con- 
sidered generally harmful." 

10. For the same reason, if I were a boy. I 
would not drink beer or wine or any kind of alco- 
holic liquor. Here, too, there is a dispute among 
the doctors, some of them saying that men may 
sometimes drink wine or beer without harm ; but 
here, too, they all are perfectly agreed that for boys 
such drinks are always harmful. A great many 
boys in this country are learning to drink beer. 
Some of them think that there is no harm in it. 
But in thousands of cases, it has brought a deadly- 
train of misery along with it. It has crippled many 
a man's best powers ; it has been the beginning of 
drunkenness and of blighted lives. And not only be- 
cause of the probable harm to yourselves, but be- 
cause of the trouble and poverty and sorrow that it 
causes all over the land, have nothing to do with it. 

I have used much of my time in telling you what 
I would not do if I were a boy ; let me say a few 
words about what I would do. 

I. I would have a good time, if I could. I do 
not put this first because it is the main thing ; 
nevertheless, it is an important thing. There are 
some little fellows who are not able to have a very- 
good time. Sometimes a boy's father dies, or there 
is sickness and trouble in his family, and he is com- 
pelled to go to work in early boyhood, and to work 
hard all the time, with small chance for fun. When 
such a duty is laid upon a boy, of course he must 
do it, and if he is the right sort of fellow, he will 
do it bravely and cheerfully ; many a boy has 
shown his manliness in this way. The courage 
and devotion of some boys whom I have known, in 
shouldering such burdens as these, are beyond 
all praise. But this is not the kind of life that we 
would choose for a boy. He ought to work, no 
matter what his circumstances may be ; he ought 
to spend in some useful way a considerable por- 
tion of his time out of school hours ; but then he 
ought to play, as well as to work : to be a lively, 
merry, hearty lad. If I were a boy, I would be 
expert, if I could, at all right manly sports; I 
would be glad to be the strongest, swiftest, jolli- 
est fellow on the playground. But I would do 
my work thoroughly first, and take my pastime 
afterward with a good conscience. 



2. I would have my outdoor fun, too, in the 
daytime, and stay at home in the evening. 
Home is the right place for boys in the evenings. 
The boy who stays at home evenings is not 
only safest, he is also happiest. The kind of 
diversion he gets by roaming the streets of a 
city after dark is a kind that makes him restless 
and miserable ; it unfits him for any quiet and 
reposeful life. Now the truth is, boys, that it is 
just as necessary for you to learn how to enjoy a 
quiet time, as it is to learn how to enjoy a noisy 
and exciting time ; and evening is the time, and 
home is the place, for you to cultivate this gentler 
part of your nature, the part that will make you a 
gentleman. 

3. If I were a boy, I would consider it a large 
part of a boy's business to learn to work. Work 
is not naturally pleasant to many of us ; the taste 
for it has to be acquired. Youth is the time 
to acquire it. You can learn to take a tough 
problem in arithmetic, or an abstruse chapter in 
physics, or a long Greek conjugation, and put 
everything else out of your mind, and think right 
at it, just as intently as if it were a ball game, 
until it is finished. You can learn to take any 
other difficult and troublesome job, and fasten 
your thought and energy upon it, and do it thor- 
oughly. This power of concentration and perse- 
verance is one main thing to learn. Knowing 
what I now know about life, I am sure that if I 
were a boy again, this would be one of the things 
that I should try hardest to learn. 

4. I would learn, too, to obey. That is one of 
the manliest traits of character, after all — obedi- 
ence. It is what makes a soldier. To be able 
promptly and cheerfully to conform to all rightful 
authority, to bend your will to the wills of those 
who are directing your work — this is a noble vir- 
tue. It is a great part of discipline to acquire it. 
The time to acquire it is boyhood. 

5. I would learn self-control. Boys are gener- 
ally creatures of impulse. What they feel like do- 
ing they are apt to rush ahead and do, without 
stopping to consider whether it is wise or not. 
In the craving for pleasure of one sort or an- 
other, they are not always willing to hear rea- 
son. But, unless he is going to make shipwreck 
of life, every boy must learn to draw the rein, not 
only over temper, but over desire, and to say to 
himself now and then, " Hold on ! / 'm doing 
this, and I 'm not going to be a fool ; let 's see 
what is right and best before we go any further." 
The power to pull himself up in this way and use 
his reason and his judgment, instead of letting im- 
pulse determine his conduct, is a power that, if I 
were a boy again, I should begin to cultivate very 
earlv in life. 



i8s 7 .; 



GRIZEL COCHRANE S RIDE. 



PINE-NEEDLES. 
By William H. Hayne. 



271 



IF Mother Nature patches 
The leaves of trees and vines, 

I 'm sure she does her darning 
With needles of the pines ! 



They are so long and slender ; 

And sometimes, in full view, 
They have their thread of cobwebs, 

And thimbles made of dew ! 




(Founded oil an incident of the Monmouth Rebellion.) 

By Elia W. Peattie. 



In the midsummer of 1685, the hearts of the 
people of old Edinburgh were filled with trouble 
and excitement. King Charles the Second, of 
England, was dead, and his brother, the Duke of 
York, reigned in his stead to the dissatisfaction 
of a great number of the people. 

The hopes of this class lay with the young Duke 
of Monmouth, the ambitious and disinherited son 
of Charles the Second, who, on account of the 
King's displeasure, had been living for some time 
at foreign courts. On hearing of the accession of 
his uncle, the Duke of York, to the throne, Mon- 
mouth yielded to the plans of the English and 
Scottish lords who favored his own pretensions, 
and prepared to invade England with a small but 
enthusiastic force of men. 

The Duke of Argyle, the noblest lord of Scot- 
land, who also was an exile, undertook to conduct 



the invasion at the north, while Monmouth should 
enter England at the west, gather the yeomanry 
about him and form a triumphant conjunction 
with Argyle in London, and force the " usurper," 
as they called King James the Second, from his 
throne. 

Both landings were duly made. The power of 
Monmouth's name and rank rallied to his banner 
at first a large number of adherents ; but their de- 
feat at Sedgemoor put an end to his invasion. And 
the Duke of Argyle, a few days after his landing 
in Scotland, was met by a superior force of the 
King's troops. Retreating into a morass, his sol- 
diers were scattered and dispersed. Many of his 
officers deserted him in a panic of fear. The brave 
old nobleman himself was taken prisoner, and be- 
headed at Edinburgh, while all the people secretly 
mourned. He died without betraying his friends, 



GRIZEL COCHRANE S RIDE. 



[February, 



though the relentless King of England threatened 
to compel him to do so, by the torture of the thumb- 
screw and the rack. 

Many of his officers and followers underwent the 
same fate ; and among those imprisoned to await 
execution was a certain nobleman, Sir John Coch- 
rane, who had been made famous by other politi- 
cal intrigues. His friends used all the influence 
that their high position accorded them to procure 
his pardon, but without success ; and the unfort- 
unate baronet, a moody and impulsive man by 
nature, felt that there was no escape from the terri- 
ble destiny, and prepared to meet it in a manner 
worthy of a follower of the brave old duke. But he 
had one friend on whose help he had not counted. 

In an upper chamber of an irregular, many- 
storied mansion far down the Canongate, Grizel 
Cochrane, the imprisoned man's daughter, sat 
through the dread hours waiting to learn her 
father's sentence. There was too little doubt as to 
what it would be. The King and his generals 
meant to make merciless examples of the leaders 
of the rebellion. Even the royal blood that flowed 
in the veins of Monmouth had not saved his head 
from the block. This proud prince, fleeing from 
the defeat of Sedgemoor, had been found hiding 
in a ditch, covered over with the ferns that flour- 
ished at the bottom. Grizel wept as she thought 
of the young duke's horrible fate. She remem- 
bered when she had last seen him about the court 
at Holland, where she had shared her father's exile. 
Gay, generous, and handsome, he seemed a creat- 
ure born to live and rule. What a contrast was 
the abject, weeping coward covered with mud and 
slime, who had been carried in triumph to the 
grim Tower of London to meet his doom ! The 
girl had been taught to believe in Monmouth's 
rights, and she walked the floor trembling with 
shame and impatience as she thought of his bitter 
defeat. She walked to the little dormer win- 
dow and leaned out to look at the gray castle, 
far up the street, with its dull and lichen-covered 
walls. She knew that her father looked down 
from the barred windows of one of the upper 
apartments accorded to prisoners of state. She 
wondered if a thought of his little daughter crept 
in his mind amid his ruined hopes. The grim 
castle frowning at her from its rocky height filled 
her with dread ; and shuddering, she turned from 
it toward the street below to let her eyes follow 
absently the passers-by. They whispered together 
as they passed the house, and when now and then 
some person caught a glimpse of her face in the 
ivy-sheltered window, she only met a look of com- 
miseration. No one offered her a happy greeting. 

" They all think him doomed," she cried to her- 
self. "No one hath the grace to feign hope." 



Bitter tears filled her eyes, until suddenly through 
the mist she was conscious that some one below 
was lifting a plumed hat to her. It was a stately 
gentleman with a girdled vest and gorgeous coat 
and jeweled sword-hilt. 

" Mistress Cochrane," said he, in that hushed 
voice we use when we wish to direct a remark to 
one person, which no one else shall overhear, " I 
have that to tell thee which is most important." 

"Is it secret?" asked Grizel, in the same 
guarded tone that he had used. 

" Yes," he replied, without looking up, and con- 
tinuing slowly in his walk, as if he had merely ex- 
changed a morning salutation. 

"Then," she returned, hastily, "I will tell 
Mother ; and we will meet thee in the twilight, 
at the side door under the balcony." She contin- 
ued to look from the window, and the man saun- 
tered on as if he had no care in the world but to 
keep the scarlet heels of his shoes from the dust. 
After a time Grizel arose, changed her loose robe 
for a more ceremonious dress, bound her brown 
braids into a prim gilded net, and descended into 
the drawing-room. 

Her mother sat in mournful state at the end of 
the lofty apartment. About her were two ladies 
and several gentlemen, all conversing in low tones 
such as they might use, Grizel thought to herself, 
if her father were dead in the house. They all 
stopped talking as she entered, and looked at her 
in surprise. In those days it was thought very im- 
proper and forward for a young girl to enter a draw- 
ing-room uninvited, if guests were present. Grizel's 
eyes fell before the embarrassing scrutiny, and she 
dropped a timid courtesy, lifting her green silken 
skirts daintily, like a high-born little maiden, as 
she was. Lady Cochrane made a dignified apol- 
ogy to her guests and then turned to Grizel. 

" Well, my daughter?" she said, questioningly. 

" I pray thy pardon, Mother," said Grizel, in a 
trembling voice, speaking low, that only her 
mother might hear ; "but within a few moments 
Sir Thomas Hanford will be secretly below the 
balcony, with news for us." 

The lady half rose from her seat, trembling. 

" Is he commissioned by the governor?" she 
asked. 

"I can not tell," said the little girl; but here 
her voice broke, and regardless of the strangers, 
she flung herself into her mother's lap, weeping: 
" I am sure it is bad news of Father ! " Lady Coch- 
rane wound her arm about her daughter's waist, 
and, with a gesture of apology, led her from the 
room. Half an hour later she re-entered it hur- 
riedly, followed by Grizel, who sank unnoticed in 
the deep embrasure of a window, and shivered 
there behind the heavy folds of the velvet hangings. 



i88 7 .] 



GRIZEL COCHRANE S RIDE. 



2 73 




SOME ONE BELOW WAS LIFTING A PLUMED HAT TO HER. 



Vol. XIV.— 18. 



2/4 



GRIZEL COCHRANE S RIDE. 



[February, 



" I have just received terrible intelligence, my 
friends," announced Lady Cochrane, standing, 
tall and pale, in the midst of her guests. " The 
governor has been informally notified that the next 
post from London will bring Sir John's sentence. 
He is to be hanged at the Cross." There was a per- 
fect silence in the dim room ; then one of the ladies 
broke into loud sobbing, and a gentleman led Lady 
Cochrane to a chair, while the others talked apart 
in earnest whispers. 

" Who brought the information?" asked one of 
the gentlemen, at length. "Is there not hope 
that it is a false report ? " 

" I am not at liberty," said Lady Cochrane, " to 
tell who brought me this terrible news ; but it was 
a friend of the governor, from whom 1 would not 
have expected a service. Oh, is it too late," she 
cried, rising from her chair and pacing the room, 
" to make another attempt at intercession? Surely 
something can be done ! " 

The gentleman who had stood by her chair — a 
gray-headed, sober-visaged man — returned answer: 

" Do not count on any remedy now, dear Lady 
Cochrane. I know this new King. He will be 
relentless toward any one who has questioned his 
right to reign. Besides, the post has already left 
London several days, and will doubtless be here 
by to-morrow noon." 

" I am sure," said a gentleman who had not yet 
spoken, " that if we had a few days more he might 
be saved. They say King James will do anything 
for money, and the wars have emptied his treasury. 
Might we not delay the post ? " he suggested, in a 
low voice. 

" No," said the gray-headed gentleman ; " that 
is utterly impossible." 

Grizel, shivering behind the curtain, listened 
with eager ears. Then she saw her mother throw 
herself into the arms of one of the ladies and break 
into ungoverned sobs. The poor girl could stand 
no more, but glided from the room unnoticed and 
crept up to her dark chamber, where she sat, re- 
peating aimlessly to herself the words that by 
chance had fixed themselves strongest in her 
memory : " Delay the post — delay the post ! " 

The moon arose and shone in through the panes, 
making a wavering mosaic on the floor as it glim- 
mered through the wind-blown ivy at the window. 
Like a flash, a definite resolution sprang into 
Grizel's mind. If, by delaying the post, time for 
intercession with the King could be gained, and 
her father's life so saved, then the post must be 
delayed! But how? She had heard the gen- 
tleman say that it would be impossible. She knew 
that the postboy went heavily armed, to guard 
against the highwaymen who frequented the roads 
in search of plunder. This made her think of the 



wild stories of masked men who sprung from some 
secluded spot upon the postboys, and carried off 
the letters and money with which they were in- 
trusted. 

Suddenly she bounded from her seat, stood still 
a moment with her hands pressed to her head, ran 
from her room, and up the stairs which led to the 
servants' sleeping apartments. She listened at a 
door, and then, satisfied that the room was empty, 
entered, and went straight to the oaken wardrobe. 
By the light of the moon she selected a jacket and 
a pair of trousers. She looked about her for a hat 
and found one hanging on a peg near the window; 
then she searched for some time before she found a 
pair of boots. They were worn and coated with mud. 

'" They are all the better," she said to herself, 
and hurried on tiptoe down the corridor. She 
went next to the anteroom of her father's cham- 
ber. It was full of fond associations, and the hot 
tears sprung into her eyes as she looked about it. 
She took up a brace of pistols, examined them 
awkwardly, her hands trembling under their weight 
as she found at once to her delight and her terror 
that they were loaded. Then she hurried with 
them to her room. 

Half an hour later, the butler saw a figure which 
he took to be that of Allen, the stable-boy, creep- 
ing down the back stairs, boots in hand. 

" Whaur noo, me laddie?" he asked. "It's 
gey late for ye to gang oot the nicht." 

" I hae forgot to bar the stable door," replied 
Grizel in a low and trembling voice, imitating as 
well as she could the broad dialect of the boy. 

" Hech ! " said the butler. " I ne'er hear ye 
mak sae little hammer in a' yer days." 

She fled on. The great kitchen was deserted. 
She gathered up all the keys from their pegs by 
the door, let herself quietly out, and sped across 
the yard to the stable. With trembling hands she 
fitted first one key and then another to the door 
until she found the right one. Once inside the 
stable, she stood irresolute. She patted Bay Bess, 
her own little pony. 

" Thou wouldst never do, Bess," she said. 
"Thou art such a lazy little creature." The round, 
fat carriage-horses stood there. " You are just 
holiday horses, too," said Grizel to them, "and 
would be winded after an hour of the work I 
want you for to-night." But in the shadow of 
the high stall stood Black Ronald, Sir John Coch- 
rane's great, dark battle-horse, that riderless, cov- 
ered with dust and foam, had dashed down the 
Canongate after the terrible rout of Argyie in 
the bogs of Leven-side, while all the people stood 
and stared at the familiar steed, carrying, as he 
did, the first silent message of disaster. Him Grizel 
unfastened and led out. 



G R I Z E L COCHRANE S RIDE. 



75 



"Thou art a true hero," she said, rubbing his 
nose with the experienced touch of a horsewoman; 
"and I '11 give thee a chance to-night to show 
that thou art as loyal as ever." Her hands were 
cold with excitement, but she managed to buckle 
the saddle and bridle upon him, while the huge 
animal stood in restless expectancy, anxious to be 
gone. She drew on the boots without any trouble, 
and slipped the pistols into the holsters. 

" I believe thou knowest what 1 would have of 
thee," said Grizel as she led the horse out into the 
yard and on toward the gateway. Frightened, as 
he half circled about her in his impatience, she 
undid the fastening of the great gates, but her 
strength was not sufficient to swing them open. 

"Ronald," she said in despair, "I can not open 
the gates ! " Ronald turned his head about and 
looked at her with his beautiful eyes. He seemed 
to be trying to say, " / can." 

"All right," said Grizel, as if he had spoken. 
She mounted the black steed, laughed nervously 
as she climbed into the saddle. "Now," she said, 
" go on ! " The horse made a dash at the gates, 
burst them open, and leaped out into the road. He 
curveted about for a moment, his hoofs striking fire 
from the cobble-stones. Then Grizel turned his 
head down the Canongate, away from the castle. 
She knew the point at which she intended to leave 
the city, and toward that point she headed Black 
Ronald. The horse seemed to know he was doing 
his old master a service, as he took his monstrous 
strides forward. Only once did Grizel look back- 
ward, and then a little shudder, half terror, half 
remorse, struck her, for she saw her home ablaze 
with light, and heard cries of excitement borne 
faintly to her on the rushing night wind. They 
had discovered her flight. Once she thought she 
heard hoof-beats behind her, but she knew she 
could not be overtaken. 

Through the streets, now narrow, now broad, 
now straight, now crooked, dashed Black Ronald 
and his mistress. Once he nearly ran down a 
drowsy watchman who stood nodding at a sharp 
corner, but horse and rider were three hundred 
yards away before the frightened guardian re- 
gained his composure and sprang his discordant 
rattle. 

Now the houses grew scarcer, and presently 
the battlements of the town wall loomed up 
ahead, and Grizel's heart sank, for there were 
lights in the road. She heard shouts, and knew 
she was to be challenged. She firmly set her 
teeth, said a little prayer, and leaned far forward 
upon Black Ronald's neck. The horse gave a snort 
of defiance, shied violently away from a soldier 
who stood by the way, and then went through the 
gateway like a shot. Grizel clung tightly to her 



saddle-bow, and urged her steed on. On, on they 
went down the firm roadway lined on either side 
by rows of noble oaks — on, on, out into the 
country-side, where the sweet odor of the heather 
arose gracious and fragrant to the trembling girl. 
There was little chance of her taking a wrong path. 
The road over which the postboy came was the 
King's highway, always kept in a state of repair. 

She gave herself no time to notice the green up- 
land farms, or the stately residences which stood 
out on either hand in the moonlight. She con- 
centrated her strength and mind on urging her 
horse forward. She was too excited to form a 
definite plan, and her only clear idea was to meet 
the postboy before daylight, for she knew it would 
not be safe to trust too much to her disguise. Now 
and then a feeling of terror flashed over her, and 
she turned sick with dread ; but her firm pur- 
pose upheld her. 

It was almost four in the morning, and the wind 
was blowing chill from the sea, when she entered 
the rolling woodlands about the Tweed. Grizel 
was shivering with the cold, and was so tired that 
she with difficulty kept her place in the saddle. 

" We can not hold out much longer, Ronald," 
she said; "and if we fail, we can never hold up 
our heads again." Ronald, the sure-footed, stum- 
bled and nearly fell. "It is no use," sighed 
Grizel; " we must rest." She dismounted, but it 
was some moments before her tired limbs could 
obey her will. Beside the roadway was a ditch 
filled with running water, and Grizel managed to 
lead Ronald down the incline to its brink, and let 
him drink. She scooped up a little in her hand 
and moistened her tongue ; then, realizing that 
Ronald must not be allowed to stand still, she, 
with great difficulty, mounted upon his back again, 
and, heartsick, fearful, yet not daring to turn back, 
coaxed him gently forward. 

The moon had set long before this, and in the 
misty east the sky began to blanch with the first 
gleam of morning. Suddenly, around the curve 
of the road where it leaves the banks of the Tweed, 
came a dark object. Grizel's heart leaped wildly. 
Thirty seconds later she saw that it was indeed a 
horseman. He broke into a song: 

" The Lord o' Argyle cam' wi' plumes and wi' spears. 
And Monmouth he landed wi' gay cavaliers ! 
The pibroch has caa'd every tartan thegither, 
B' thoosans their footsteps a' pressin' the heather; 
Th' North and the Sooth sent their bravest ones out. 
But a joust wi' Kirke's Lambs put them all to the rout." 

By this time, the horseman was so close that 
Grizel could distinguish objects hanging upon the 
horse in front of the rider. They were the mail- 
bags ! For the first time she realized her weakness 
and saw how unlikely it was that she would be 



276 



G R I Z E L COCHRANE S RIDE. 



[February, 



able to cope with an armed man. The blood 
rushed to her head, and a courage that was the 
inspiration of the moment took possession of her. 
She struck Black Ronald a lash with her whip. 

" Go ! " she said to him shrilly, while her heart- 
beats hammered in her ears, " Go ! " 

The astonished and excited horse leaped down 
the road. As she met the postboy, she drew Black 
Ronald, with a sudden strength that was born of 
the danger, back upon his haunches. His huge 
body blocked the way. 

"Dismount!" she cried to the other rider. 
Her voice was hoarse from fright, and sounded 
strangely in her own ears. But a wild courage 
nerved her, and the hand that drew and held the 
pistol was as firm as a man's. Black Ronald was 
rearing wildly, and in grasping the reins tighter, 
her other hand mechanically altered its position 
about the pistol. 

She had not meant to fire, she had only thought 
to aim and threaten, but suddenly there was a 
flash of light in the gray atmosphere, a dull rever- 
beration, and to the girl's horrified amazement 
she saw the horse in front of her stagger and fall 
heavily to the ground. The rider, thrown from 
his saddle, was pinned to the earth by his horse 
and stunned by the fall. Dizzy with pain and con- 
fused by the rapidity of the assault, he made no 
effort to draw his weapon. 

The mail-bags had swung by their own momen- 
tum quite clear of the horse in its fall, and now 
lay loosely over its back, joined by the heavy strap. 

It was a painful task for the exhausted girl to 
dismount, but she did so, and, lifting the cum- 
bersome leathern bags, she threw them over Black 
Ronald's neck. It was yet more painful to her 
tender heart to leave the poor fellow she had 
injured lying in so pitiable a condition, but her 
father's life was in danger, and that, to her, was of 
more moment than the postboy's hurts. 

"Heaven forgive me," she said, bending over 
him. " I pray this may not be his death ! " She 
clambered over the fallen horse and mounted 
Ronald, who was calm again. Then she turned 
his head toward Edinboro' Town and hurriedly 
urged him forward. But as she sped away from 
the scene of the encounter, she kept looking back, 
with an awe-struck face, to the fallen postboy. In 
the excitement of the meeting and in her one great 
resolve to obtain her father's death-warrant, she 
had lost all thought of the risks she ran or of the 
injuries she might inflict ; and it was with unspeak- 
able relief, therefore, that she at last saw the post- 
boy struggle to his feet, and stand gazing after her. 
" Thank Heaven, he is not killed ! " she exclaimed 
again and again, as she now joyfully pressed Ronald 
into a gallop. Throughout the homeward journey, 



Grizel made it a point to urge him to greater speed 
when nearing a farmhouse, so that there would be 
less risk of discovery. Once or twice she was ac- 
costed by laborers in the field, and once by the driver 
of a cart, but their remarks were lost upon the wind 
as the faithful Ronald thundered on. She did not 
feel the need of sleep, for she had forgotten it in 
all her excitement, but she was greatly exhausted 
and suffering from the effects of her rough ride. 

Soon the smoke in the distance showed Grizel that 
her native town lay an hour's journey ahead. She 
set her teeth and said an encouraging word to the 
horse. He seemed to understand, for he redoubled 
his energies. Now the roofs became visible, and 
now, grim and sullen, the turrets of the castle 
loomed up. Grizel felt a great lump in her throat 
as she thought of her father in his lonely despair. 

She turned Ronald from the road again and cut 
through a clump of elms. She came out in a few 
minutes and rode more slowly toward a smaller 
gate than the one by which she had left the city. 
A stout soldier looked at her carelessly and then 
turned to his tankard of ale, after he had noticed 
the mail-bags. Grizel turned into a crooked, nar- 
row street lined on each side with toppling, frown- 
ing buildings. She drew rein before a humble 
house, and slipped wearily from her saddle and 
knocked at the door. An old woman opened the 
heavy oaken door and Grizel fell into her arms. 

"The bags — the mail," she gasped, and fainted. 
When she recovered consciousness, she found her- 
self on a low, rough bed. The old woman was 
bending over her. 

" Losh keep me !" said the dame. " I did na 
ken ye ! Ma puir bairnie ! Hoo cam' ye by 
these ? " and she pointed to the clothes of Allen. 

" The bags?" said Grizel, sitting bolt upright — 

" Are under the hearth," said the old woman. 

" And Ronald?" continued Grizel. 

" Is in the byre wi' the coos," said the other 
with a knowing leer. " Not a soul kens it. Ne'er 
a body saw ye come." 

Breathlessly Grizel explained all to her old nurse, 
and then sprung off the bed. At her request the 
old dame locked the door and brought her the bags. 
By the aid of a sharp knife the pair slashed open 
the leathern covering, and the inclosed packets 
fell upon the floor. With trembling hands Grizel 
fumbled them all over, tossing one after another 
impatiently aside as she read the addresses. At 
last she came upon a large one addressed to the 
governor. With beating heart she hesitated a 
moment, and then tore the packet open with shak- 
ing fingers. She easily read the bold handwriting. 
Suddenly everything swam before her, and again 
she nearly fell into her companion's arms. 

It was too true. What she read was a formal 



i88 7 .] 



GRIZEL COCHRANE S RIDE. 



277 




■GRIZEL SAW THE HORSE IN FRONT OF HER FALL HEAVILY TO THE GROUND. 



278 



GRIZEL COCHRANE S RIDE. 



[FEBRL'ARV, 



warrant of the King, signed by his majesty, and 
stamped and sealed with red wax. It ordered the 
governor to hang Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree 
at the Cross in Edinburgh at ten o'clock in the 
morning, on the third day of the following week. 
She clutched the paper and hid it in her dress. 

The disposition of the rest of the mail was soon 
decided upon. The old lady's son Jock — a wild 
fellow — was to put the sacks on the back of a 
donkey and turn it loose outside the gates, at 
his earliest opportunity. And then Grizel, clad in 
some rough garments the old lady procured, 
slipped out of the house, and painfully made her 
way toward the Canongate. 

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when she 
reached her home. The porter at the gate could 
scarcely be' made to understand that the uncouth 
figure before him was his young mistress. But a 
moment later her mother was embracing her, with 
tears of joy. 

All the male friends of Sir John were hastily- 
summoned, and Grizel related her adventure, and 
displayed the death-warrant of her father. The 
hated document was consigned to the flames, a 
consultation was held, and that night three of the 
gentlemen left for -London. 



The next day, the donkey and the mail-sacks 
were found by a sentry, and some little excite- 
ment was occasioned ; but when the postboy came 
in later, and related how he had been attacked by 
six stalwart robbers, and how he had slain two 
of them and was then overpowered and forced 
to surrender the bags, all wonderment was set 
at rest. 

The Cochrane family passed a week of great 
anxiety, but when it was ended, the three friends 
returned from London with joyful news. The 
King had listened to their petition, and had or- 
dered the removal of Sir John to the Tower of 
London, until his case could be reconsidered. So 
to London Sir John went ; and after a time the 
payment of five thousand pounds to some of the 
King's advisers secured an absolute pardon. His 
lands, which had been confiscated, were restored 
to him ; and on his arrival at his Scottish home, 
he was warmly welcomed by a great concourse 
of his friends. He thanked them in a speech, 
taking care, however, not to tell who was so 
greatly instrumental in making his liberation 
possible. But we may be sure that he was 
secretly proud of the pluck and devotion of his 
daughter Grizel. 




^HSI®L©^Mi; 




'•'■>At*. ;. 







JENNY S BOARDING-HOUSE. 



2 79 



JENNY'S BOARDING-HOUSE. 
By James Otis. 



Chapter I. 



A PLAN AND A BABY. 



"BUT it would cost more 'n a hundred dollars, 
an' I tell you what it is, fellers, we never could do 
it in the world." 

"How do you know, Pin White? You never 
saw so much money, an' you never owned a house, 
so what 's the use tryin' to break it up before you 
find out what it is ? " 

" Oh, I don't know what it is, don't I ? Well, 
what were you talkin' 'bout when you said you 
wanted us to help Jenny Wren start a boardin'- 
house ? An' if I have n't found out about it, Ikey 
Jarvis, after all you 've said, s'pose you begin an' 
tell us what you mean?" 

As Pinney White — whose name, by the way, 
when properly pronounced, was Alpenna — made 
these few remarks, which he believed to be in the 
highest degree sarcastic, he placed his thumbs 
where the armholes of his vest would have been 
if he had been wearing any such garment, and 
looked about at his companions in a satisfied and 
triumphant manner. 

" Of course I did n't mean that," said Ikey quickly, 
understanding that by the use of such strong lan- 
guage he had given Pinney at least a temporary 
advantage over him. "What I say is, that you 
don't know anything 'bout startin' this kind of a 
boardin'-house." 

" Well, what do you know of it?" asked Tom 
Downing, smiling in a manner that Ikey thought 
very disagreeable. 

" I know what Jenny has told me," replied 
Master Jarvis almost angrily ; and he then added 
more softly, " Now, fellers, this is jest the way 
Jenny talks, an' I tell you she has more sense in 
her little finger, even if she is only fifteen years 
old, than the whole of us together. Her mother 
owns fifty dollars, an' is so rheumatic that she 
won't be able to go out to work very much this 
winter, so she 's got to scare up some way of earn- 
in' a livin'. So, Jenny says that if we fellers 
would come to board with her, an' bring all the 
others we know, there could be good deal of 
money made. She 's found a house over on Car- 
penter street that she can have for forty dollars a 
month, and it '11 hold pretty near every feller in 
town what sells papers. She won't have any 
money to buy furniture with, after she pays the 



rent, an' she says that if each one of us five boys 
will put in ten dollars, that '11 be fifty dollars, an' 
we '11 own half the place, an' get our share of all 
she makes." 

"Oh, that's different from what you said be- 
fore," added Tom; and believing now that it was 
an opportunity to make money, instead of some 
charitable scheme, he began to look upon the 
matter with more favor. 

" Then if we put in ten dollars, we can stay jest 
as long as we want to without payin' anything for 
board, can we?" asked Sam Tousey, his eyes 
opening wide as he believed he saw an opportunity 
of indulging his love of indolence. 

"Of course not," replied Ikey quickly, and look- 
ing at Sam as scornfully as he dared. " S'posen 
we did that, how would Jenny have any money to 
run the house with ? We 've got to pay our board 
jest the same as the others ; but when she makes 
anything out of the place, we five will get half of 
it. Now do you understand?" 

'• Yes, I understand that part of it," said Jack 
Phinney quickly, and then he added in a tone of 
painful indecision, "What I 'd like to know is 
where we fellers are goin' to get the money that 
she wants ? " 

"Earn it, of course," replied Ikey, who was 
looked upon as the wealthy member of the party. 
" You 're alters talkin' 'bout not havin' any money, 
an' you an' Sam oughter be pardners. If you 'd 
both work every day like the rest of us, an' took 
care of what you made, you 'd have ten dollars 
now." 

" We would, would we ? Well, now that you 're 
so smart about it, I don't believe you 've got that 
much," retorted Jack. 

"If I had all the fellers owe me I would, an' a 
good deal more," replied Ikey; "but I 've got 
pretty nigh enough anyhow." 

" Let 's turn to an' find out jest how much 
we can raise ; then we '11 know what we 're talkin' 
about," said Tom, who evidently had become 
deeply interested in the plan. 

The boys had been standing in front of one of the 
large newspaper offices in New York City, where 
they had met after the morning's work was fin- 
ished ; and now, in accordance with Tom's propo- 
sition, they adjourned to the City Hall Park to 
count their treasure. Out of the way of any too 
officious policeman, and far enough from one an- 
other to prevent the slightest possibility of ques- 



2 8o 



JENNY S BOARDING-HOUSE. 



[February, 



tion that any one could take up more than he put 
down, the small newsdealers began what was a 
protracted, and in some cases an almost painful, 
time of mental calculation. Sam, in particular, 
had a severe struggle to count correctly the pen- 
nies he had spread out on the bench in front of 
him ; and if he had not called upon I key for assist- 
ance, the business of the day would have been 
even more seriously delayed. 

It was found that Sam had but forty-nine cents, 
although heinsisted that every fellow who counted 
it must have made a mistake, for he was positive 
that he had very much more. 

Jack had one dollar and fifty-six cents. Pinney 
was the proud owner of four dollars and twenty- 
three ; Tom had twenty-eight cents more than 
Pinney ; and Ikey triumphantly displayed seven 
dollars and ninety cents. 

" That 's as much as the whole thing makes," 
Ikey said, as he added the several amounts to- 
gether, and wrote down the total in very shaky- 
looking figures. "Not half what Jenny wanted," 
he went on, " but, if we agree to go into the thing, 
we can soon get enough. Now, what do you say?" 

" Who 's to be the boss of the house ? " asked 
Sam, looking at his small amount of money as if 
he thought it sufficient to entitle him to the position 
of president of the corporation, at the very least. 

" Why, Jenny is, of course ! " said Ikey. " It 
will be her boardin'-house, an' we won't have any 
more to do with it than the other fellers what lives 
there, 'cept that, if any money 's made, we get our 
shares." 

" But we 've got to take hold an' keep the thing 
goin', or else we 'd better not have anything to 
do with it," said Tom. " I don't b'lieve she '11 
make much for a good while, p'rhaps not for this 
winter, an' we 're the ones that 'II have to see that 
she gets along all right." 

"That's it, that 's jest it!" cried Ikey, de- 
lighted because Tom was really showing some en- 
thusiasm in the matter. " We 've got to work 
hard till she gets started, an' then we '11 stand a 
good chance to make some money." 

"But don't we have a hand in runnin' the 
house ? " persisted Sam, doubtful as to whether he 
would better part with his wealth unless he could at 
least be one of the directors. 

" Jenny says that our work is to get all the fel- 
lers we can to board with us, an' to make 'em be- 
have theirselves decent," answered Ikey. " We 
're to have rules for the place, an' we can fix 'em 
up to suit ourselves." 

" Then every one of us brings a rule, eh ? " and 
Sam looked relieved, now that he knew he could 
at least have a voice in the management. 

" Yes, every one does that," assented Ikey. 



"Now, what do you say? Will you all come 
in ? " 

" But what about my havin' only forty-nine 
cents ? " asked Sam, beginning to fear that he 
might hot be received as a member of the corpo- 
ration with so little cash at his command. 

" Why, you '11 have to scurry 'round an' get the 
money as quick as you can. Put in all you 've 
got but jest enough to buy your papers with, this 
afternoon, an' then work as hard as you know 
how." 

There was no necessity for Ikey to ask again if 
the others were willing to join him in the enter- 
prise, for every one showed, as plainly as the most 
sceptical could have desired, how eager he was to 
become a stockholder in Jenny's boarding-house. 
One trifling detail of business alone remained to 
be settled, and they were reminded of this by Tom 
Downing, who said : 

" Of course it'll be all right for us to give our 
money to you or Jenny, 'cause we know it '11 be 
put into the house ; but you oughter fix up some- 
thin' to tell how much each one pays, and what 
it 's for." 

Pinney nodded his head vigorously to show that 
he thought such a course would be the only cor- 
rect way of transacting the business, and Ikey 
asked in almost a sad tone : 

" Do you fellers think I oughter write out a 
paper for each one ? " 

" Of course we must all have the same thing," 
said Sam positively; and considering the fact that, 
after deducting the fifteen cents needed to lay in 
his afternoon stock, Master Tousey had only thirty- 
four cents toward starting a boarding-house, Ikey 
thought he was asking for almost more than was fair. 

" It '11 take me 'bout all the afternoon to write 
em," he said with a sigh; "but I can do it, I 
s'pose. You fellers give me your money so 's I 
can show Jenny I 've got it. She '11 hire the 
house right away, and I '11 meet you here to-night 
'bout seven o'clock to go round to see it, then I '11 
have the writin's fixed." 

The boys gave their cash into Ikey's keeping, 
all save Sam doing so without a murmur. He 
appeared to think that he ought to have a receipt 
then and there, lest the custodian of the money, 
tempted by the possession of so much wealth, 
might prove unfaithful to the trust, and flee to 
some foreign country. Sam succeeded, after quite 
a mental struggle, in stifling his suspicions, and 
Ikey started away at full speed to find Jenny, 
leaving the directors of the proposed boarding- 
house to discuss the different questions that began 
to arise, relative to the responsibilities they had 
so recently assumed. 

Jack Phinney had considerable to say about fel- 



i88 7 .] 



JENNYS BOARDING-HOUSE. 



28l 



lows who were willing to risk their entire wealth 
in an enterprise, and then were debarred from 
exercising any governing powers. No one save 
Sam paid much attention to his plaint, and the 
two sympathized with each other, while Pinney 
and Tom tried to decide what rules they could 
make which would be most beneficial to the 
inmates of Jenny's boarding-house. 

" There 's one thing we '11 get Jenny to say, 



every one of us owes part of what Jenny wanted 
us to pay." 

" Now see here, Pinney White, we 'd better fix 
this thing at the start. I 'm not goin' to live with 
a lot of fellers that want ter set down to dinner 
without washin' their faces, an' you know it. I 
would n't put in a cent toward openin' a place that 
would be like some, an' you '11 find out that Jenny 
will say 'bout the same thing. It won't hurt you a 




'THE SMALL NEWSDEALERS BEGAN A TAINFUL TIME OF MENTAL CALCULATION. 



an' that is that no feller can come to the table till 
he 's washed his face." 

Tom spoke very decidedly, as indeed he should 
have done, since he was overparticular, his inti- 
mate friends thought, on the subject of cleanli- 
ness. 

Pinney looked distressed. He was a bov who 
did not believe in the useless waste of soap neces- 
sary to wash a fellow's face even once a day, and 
he knew of several, whom he had intended to 
introduce as boarders, who were quite as econom- 
ical in this particular as himself. 

"I would n't have that rule, Tom," he said, 
almost imploringly. " I know a good many of 
the fellers who would kick if you did, an', besides, 
you 'd have to buy soap and towels. I go in for 
havin' things jest as comfortable as you do ; but 
there is n't any use throwin' money away when 



bit to wash up every day, an' it '11 make you feel a 
sight better, too. Besides, how 'd you look bein' 
one of the bosses of a reg'lar house, with your face 
as dirty as it is now ? " 

Pinney seemed concerned at this last sugges- 
tion. He knew very well that there could be no 
pleasure in exerting himself to be cleanly ; but as 
one of the stockholders it did really seem as if he 
should change his personal appearance a trifle ; 
therefore he said: 

" Well, we '11 let it go that way an' see how 
the fellers will take it: but I '111 'fraid we '11 have 
trouble with some of 'em." 

" I '11 fix that," replied Tom, decidedly. "Now 
let 's all see how many boarders we can get before 
the evenin' papers come out." 

Recognizing the necessity of interesting their 
friends and acquaintances in the plan so that 



282 



JENNY S BOARDING-HOUSE. 



[February, 



Jenny's boarding-house might, at the very com- 
mencement, be on a paying basis, the stockhold- 
ers started out to make the scheme known to the 
public, and to solicit patronage. In the delight- 
ful occupation of news-bearers Sam and Jack 
forgot their supposed grievances ; or rather, they 
soothed their wounded feelings by representing to 
their particular circle of acquaintances that they 
were in reality the very head and front of the 
enterprise, but had allowed a few friends to appear 
as if clothed with equal authority. 

As the directors had expected, the statement 
that Jenny Parsons, otherwise known as Jenny 
Wren, was about to open a boarding-house, caused 
no small amount of excitement among those who 
were acquainted with her or any of the directors. 

Some of the boys were highly delighted with the 
scheme, believing that it would be more pleasant 
to live together in that way, than to remain at the 
News-boys' Lodging-house ; but at the same time, 
they doubted very seriously whether the enterprise 
would be a paying one. Others objected to the plan 
in every detail. Others publicly stated that it could 
not succeed if Jenny depended upon two so notori- 
ously lazy fellows as Sam Tousey and Jack Phinney 
for any portion of the necessary capital. Several 
declared that they would not become inmates of 
Jenny's boarding-house for the same reason that 
they objected to a larger establishment, which was 
that they would not allow others to lay down rules 
for them to follow, and that " if Tom Downing 
thought he could make the fellows wash their faces 
as often as he did his, he was mistaken." 

Thus it was that the business community of 
which the stockholders of Jenny's boarding-house 
were members was divided in opinion as to the 
success of the plan ; but there were so many who 
had promised, under certain stipulations, to engage 
board, that Tom and Pinney were perfectly satis- 
fied with these first results, even though Sam and 
Jack had already begun to grow discouraged. 

Ikey met his friends according to agreement, 
and was in a high state of excitement regarding 
the scheme. He had gone with Mrs. Parsons and 
Jenny to inspect and afterward to lease the house. 

" It 's jest about as nice as it can be for forty 
dollars a month, an' when we get it fixed up the 
way Jenny's mother says, it '11 knock the spots 
out of anything this crowd has ever seen." 

" I don't believe we can make it go," Sam said 
disconsolately. " A good many of the fellers think 
it '11 bust us all up." 

" It can't hurt you but thirty-four cents' worth if 
it smashes right away," replied Tom quickly; 
" besides, we can get all the boarders the house '11 
hold. Most of the fellers you an' Jack was talkin' 
with are jest the kind we don't want anyhow." 



"What do they say about it?" asked Ikey eagerly. 

Pinney repeated all the comments he had heard, 
whether they were favorable or not, and even be- 
fore he had finished Sam asked Ikey : " Did you 
bring the papers you said you 'd write ? " 

By way of reply Ikey drew from his pocket, 
with an air of triumph, four business cards he had 
begged from some store, and on the back of the 
one he handed Sam was the following inscription : 



"SAM TOSEY HAS PAID 

34 SENTS FOR THE BODING HOUSE. 

HE OWS 9 DOLERS & 66 SENTS." 



" Jenny has got all the money," Ikey said, after 
he had given his friends sufficient time for them 
to admire the specimens of his skill as an account- 
ant, "an' she an' her mother are off now buyin' 
a lot o' things. They '11 have the place fixed up 
so 's we can sleep there to-night, an' I 'm goin' to 
get the things for a big supper." 

The idea of a feast was enough to revive all 
Sam's former enthusiasm for the scheme, and, 
without bringing up again the question of indi- 
vidual authority, he displayed the greatest eager- 
ness to start at once for the boarding-house. 

The business of the day was nearly ended ; Pin- 
ney had one paper left from his afternoon's stock, 
and when that had been disposed of by the united 
efforts of all the directors, there was nothing to 
prevent them from going to their new home. 

Carpenter street, although it may not be found 
on any of the maps of New York City, is located 
not far from the principal newspaper offices, and 
in less than ten minutes from the time the boys 
left Printing House Square they were in front of 
a not overcleanly-looking building, which Ikey 
pointed out as their future home. 

" That's the place," he said in a tone of admira- 
tion, while they were yet some distance away — 
"Not so very swell lookin' outside, but it '11 be 
mighty nice inside, after it 's fixed up." 

" What 's the bundle on the steps? " Tom asked 
when they were sufficiently near the building to 
admit of their seeing the boarding-house more dis- 
tinctly by the light of a street lamp. 

" I guess that 's some of the things Jenny has 
been buyin'," replied Ikey. " She must be back, 
though she said she was afraid they could n't get 
through at the store till pretty late." 

" If she 's goin' to leave bundles outdoors in that 
way, she won't have anything very long," said 
Sam as he mentally resolved that it was his duty, 
as one of the directors, to read the young landlady 
a lecture on carelessness. 

Tom was slightly in advance of the others when 



jenny's boarding-house. 



283 



he went up the steps, and he lifted the bundle by- 
one corner roughly, almost dropping it a second 
afterward, as a noise very like that of a baby cry- 
ing was heard from beneath the ragged shawl 
which covered the package. 

"What 's that?" cried Sam, nearly tumbling 
down the steps, so startled was he by what he had 
heard. 

After the first surprise, which had caused Tom 
to lower the bundle quickly, he raised it again, 
and this time no one felt any alarm, although 
all were in a complete state of bewilderment, for 
there was no longer any question about the matter. 
There was a baby in the bundle, and it was crying 
as vigorously as if it had the best pair of lungs 
in the city. 

" Unroll it, Tom, so we can see what it looks 
like," said Ikey, while all the boys crowded around 
to see Tom undo the wrappings as awkwardly as 
only a boy can, regardless alike of the baby's now 
almost piercing screams, and the chill winter wind 
to which he was about to introduce the unfortu- 
nate infant. 

" It is a reg'lar young one, an' no mistake ! " he 
said as he held the chubby little youngster so that 
the wind blew directly upon it. 

Ikey was already trying the door ; but, to his 
great surprise, he could not arouse any one. The 
house was evidently without occupants, since no 
reply was made to his vigorous knocking, and not 
a light could be seen from any of the windows. 

" They have n't come home at all," he said, 
turning around just as Tom was trying to per- 
suade the very cold-looking baby to have a bite of 
a half-frozen apple. " Now, who does that belong 
to ? " 

By "that," Ikey meant the infant ; but none of 
his companions could answer the question, and for 
some moments every one remained silent, while the 
baby screamed its protests against being thus ex- 
posed to the cold. 

"Better tie it up agin, Tom," suggested Jack, 
with an air of wisdom. "It doesn't want any 
apple, and p'rhaps the wind 's a little too strong 
for it. My aunt don't let any of her babies go out- 
doors bareheaded in the winter." 

" But where did this one come from ? That 's 
what I want to know," persisted Ikey, as he looked 
about him in perplexity. 

" 1 '11 tell you jest how it is," replied Tom, as 
he spread the shawl on the doorstep, and, laying 
the screaming child upon it, rolled the little thing 

CTo be continued.) 



up much as if it had been some article of mer- 
chandise. "This baby did n't come here all by 
itself, did it?" 

" Of course not ! " assented the others. 

"Then it 's been left here by somebody too poor 
to take good care of it. Likely its folks will turn 
up before long," said Tom. 

' ' But what '11 we do with it ? " asked Sam. 

" We 'II wait a while and see," said Tom, sage- 
ly. " One of you fellers go an' buy a whole slat 
of candy, so 's to make it stop hollerin', an' I '11 
take care of it till Jenny comes. We agreed that 
every one should make a rule, an' this one is 
mine : ' We '11 all own the baby as we own the 
boardin'-house ' ; an', if nobody turns up to claim 
him, we can have no end o' fun with him before 
winter 's over." 

Just then it seemed to all the stockholders as if 
it would be a very pleasant thing to own a baby, 
and Ikey started at once to buy some candy for 
their new property, while Tom sat on the door- 
step, trying to still its cries. 




p- wr nil 



284 



JUAN AND J U A N I T A . 



[February, 



JUAN AND JU ANITA. 
By Frances Courtexay Baylor. 



Chapter IY. 

When at last the strain of the day's alarms and 
exertions was over, and was succeeded by dark- 
ness, stillness, and temporary safety, poor little 
Nita became quite hysterical and sobbed her- 
self to sleep on Juan's shoulder. She refused to 
eat anything, and was as weary, footsore, and 
entirely exhausted a child as can be imagined. 
But for the protecting arms that encircled her, 
the confidence that Juan's cleverness and daring 
had inspired, and her belief that they were to stay- 
in their tree of refuge for some time, she would 
have been utterly miserable. As it was, Juan had 
to scold her a little for being so sure that they 
would never see their mother again, and so certain 
that they would eventually be recaptured. He 
told her that she must expect to undergo a great 
deal of hardship, that she must be brave, that he 
had a capital plan that would put the Indians off 
the scent, and finally, that she must go to sleep. 
He made a hearty meal from the wallet and threw 
down something now and then to Amigo, who had 
stretched himself out at the foot of the tree, and 
who richly deserved to feast after his admirable 
conduct on that eventful day. 

"A sensible dog that; not once did he bark 
after the Indians appeared, and he only gave one 
growl in the thicket. I believe he knows as well 
as I what to do." This was Juan's last thought 
before he, too, fell asleep. 

Amigo's whines awakened him before daylight ; 
and he was not sorry, for after the fatigue he had 
undergone the previous day he would certainly 
have slept late — a dangerous indulgence under 
the circumstances. He aroused Nita, who awoke 
greatly refreshed and much more cheerful. She 
was quite ready for breakfast now, and all the 
party ate with immense relish of what the wallet 
afforded. 

" It is lucky that I held on to this yesterday," 
said Juan, "in spite of the way we were chased. If I 
had lost it, we should now have nothing at all to 
eat. Well, Nita, this is what I am going to do. 
1 am going to travel due south all to-day, instead 
of southwest, so as to puzzle the Indians, who will 
be sure that I am traveling toward Mexico. Let 
us start at once." 

On hearing this, Nita lost no time in getting 
down from her perch, and they set off. She was 
so stiff at first that she could hardly move, but the 



soreness disappeared in great measure as they 
walked on. They were not yet " out of the woods," 
however, and they did not dare to feel too glad, 
while as yet they were uncertain whether their foes 
had lost or followed up their trail. 

They faced south, toward a mountain from which 
Juan thought he could get a good view of possible 
pursuers, and where they could perhaps find water. 
Owing to the extraordinary purity of the atmos- 
phere of that region, it seemed to him to be only 
about three miles distant, but it proved to be 
almost ten. A long walk it seemed under a burn- 
ing midday sun, and when they arrived at the 
mountain, there was still the ascent to be made. 
As soon as they had come within sight of the 
woods that covered it, Juan's eyes had eagerly 
roved from spot to spot, until they discerned one 
piece near the top, where the trees were of a dark rich 
green, in decided contrast with those about them. 

" There is water, unfailing water ! " he exclaimed 
delightedly. "But you are dreadfully tired, Nita. 
You must have a good rest under that large oak 
before you begin to climb the mountain. We 
will take that ravine, and follow it up." They 
both were very weary, and were consumed with 
thirst. Nita could only stagger forward a few 
more steps; she sank down on the grass, but 
rose up again presently, and managed to reach 
the tree. 

When they had rested in the grateful shade of 
the oak for about an hour, they began the ascent, 
lured by the thought of the water they needed 
and craved. The ravine was dry, and edged by 
foliage so pathetically burnt and blighted that one 
would not have thought there was a drop of water 
within fifty miles of it. But, convinced that he 
was right, Juan struggled on, up the steep ascent, 
and pushed his way through the brush, encouraging 
Nita all the while and helping her when her cour- 
age failed or her strength gave out, which hap- 
pened again and again. The heat was intolerable, 
and her poor little feet were bleeding, her throat 
parched, her lips swollen, her whole frame one 
great ache. 

When they had been toiling along in this way 
for some hours, the ravine made a sudden turn to 
the left, a refreshing breeze struck them, there 
was a little stretch of shade before them, and the 
brother and sister sat down to rest. They were 
too exhausted to talk, and in the stillness they 
presently heard a sound sweeter than any that 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 



285 



could be made by Thomas's entire orchestra — the 
faint silvery tinkle of falling waters ! Amigo heard 
it, too, and bounded off, and after a time came back 
dripping, and evidently delighted. The children 
gave a cry of joy, but could not move just then. 
As soon as they had recovered a little, they pushed 
on again, and though they had some hard climb- 
ing that tried them sorely, the delicious, rippling, 
gushing music that grew louder every moment so 
animated them that they felt almost brisk, and 
marched on until they were brought up suddenly 
by a cliff of rock. Juan followed along its base 
until he found a tree, the top branches of which 
were nearly on a level with the ground above. By 
means of this ingenious natural staircase — they 
did not stop to look for the one by which Amigo 
had ascended — Juan and Juanita mounted safely 
into the upper regions, and set off in a sort of limp- 
ing run that brought them to what seemed at the 
time the loveliest spot that had ever met their 
eyes. It was a second, lower cliff of gray stone 
to which the winds and storms of thousands of 
years had given an exquisite bloom, an infinite 
variety of soft neutral tints. From under a ledge 
issued " a thing of life" — a beautiful little stream 
of clear, cold water, that danced out and away from 
the overhanging canopy of fine old walnut, pecan, 
and pollard-willows, sparkled in the sunshine like 
the jewel it was, and fell over the edge of the pla- 
teau beyond. About the spring was a green circle 
of mosses and aquatic plants, starred with water- 
lilies, and fringed with quantities of maiden-hair 
fern. 

The two children dimly felt the charm of the 
place ; they reveled in the coolness of the shade, 
bathed luxuriously in the water, and drank as freely 
of it as they dared, after so long a fast. Juan had 
to pull Nita bodily away from the spring, and to 
insist on her taking only a mouthful at a time. 
They both bathed their feet, quenched their thirst 
gradually, and ate their frugal dinner; and then 
both enjoyed a good long rest, stretched out at full 
length in the shade. 

" This is such a nice place, and I am so tired, 
and so are you, Juan ! Casteel will never find us 
now. Let us stay here for several days," said 
Nita. But Juan shook his head, and, getting up, 
reconnoitered the neighborhood in true Indian 
style. He was gone some little time, and Nita was 
beginning to feel anxious, when she saw him com- 
ing back with something in each hand, she could 
not tell what, at first. 

" See ! See ! Here is a piece of good fortune ! " 
he called out, waving in the air his treasure-trove — 
a pair of old boots and a battered tin canteen. He 
was in high spirits. "We need not suffer again 
as we have done to-day," he said. "These have 

* Texans. 



doubtless been left by some scouting party of 
Te.xicanos* And, Nita, 1 am going to make you 
a pair of stout moccasins out of the tops of these 
boots, so that your poor feet won't be cut by the 
stones when we start off again." 

"Oh, don't talk of traveling any more to-day, 
Juan ! 1 can't. A bird can't fly with a broken 
wing," expostulated Nita. " I can not stir. You 
are very good to think of making :apatos f for me, 
brother mine. Can't you make a pair for your- 
self?" 

"You shall see," replied Juan; and with his 
knife he soon improvised shoes for both, made Nita 
pick the thorns out of her feet, cut strips of leather 
and bound on her sandals, filled the canteen, and 
announced that he was ready to go. 

" This is evidently a well-known watering-place," 
he said. " White men have been here, and Indians. 
I find deer-runs leading to it, plenty of turkey- 
tracks, deer-tracks, some bear-tracks, a few buffalo- 
tracks. We will not go very far, but it won't do to 
stay here. Do you see those blue peaks over there? 
I am going there, and when I get there, I shall 
change my course to southwest again, and shall 
soon snap my fingers at Casteel and every Co- 
manche in the tribe. I know they are working on 
a wrong scent to-day, and now that I am thus far 
ahead of them, I ought to be able to keep out of 
their reach forever." 

They both took another drink before leaving, 
and Nita gave a lingering look at the merry little 
mountain stream and the dense shade, as she 
hobbled oft" obediently behind Juan, with Amigo 
reluctantly bringing up the rear. Night found them 
plodding along a deer-run, single file, through 
the brush ; and before the light quite faded, Juan 
built a sort of bower of branches, in a protected 
spot where some large rocks also afforded partial 
shelter, by forming an angle that had only to 
be roofed to make a very respectable sentry-box. 
Into this the brother and sister crept, while Amigo 
mounted guard outside. They were not accus- 
tomed to being in the woods alone at night, 
and Nita thought the hooting of the owls a sinister 
sound, the perpetual plaint of the whip-poor-will 
very melancholy, the whole situation alarming. 
She lay awake for some time, expecting she knew 
not what — but something dreadful. 

With Amigo on guard, and with his bow and ar- 
rows at his side, Juan felt none of his sister's nerv- 
ous terrors. He talked as if his bower were an im- 
pregnable fortress, he took some food, made Nita 
do the same, and after throwing some small scraps 
to Amigo and promising to knock over a rabbit 
for him next day, the young brave stretched him- 
self out comfortably on the ground and slept the 
sleep of a very tired and perfectly healthy boy. 

t Shoes. 



286 



JUAN AND J U ANITA. 



[February, 



Neither he nor Nita felt the want of soft beds or 
downy pillows. They were quite used to doing 
without such luxuries, and were far less restless 
than the Princess in the fairy-tale, who slept on 
forty feather-beds. 

As for their appetite next morning, it was so 
vigorous that they could almost have breakfasted 
on tenpenny nails. But alas! and alack! there 
was nothing left in the wallet excepting a little 
corn that had been parched in the ashes. Even 
Amigo only took this under protest, and sniffed 
at it in a very ill-bred way. Uncertain when 
they should again find water, they were afraid 
to drink much from the canteen which they had 
filled, knowing that they might have to depend 
for their very existence on the precious fluid it con- 
tained. One small mouthful, each, they allowed 
themselves before beginning the clay's journey, 
which lay for the most part, after they had de- 
scended the mountain, across an open stretch of 
shadeless prairie. 

As on the previous day, the heat was intense, the 
glare almost blinding. Breeze there was none; the 
very earth seemed ready to blister under the fierce 
heat that rayed down from the sun. But for the 
shoes that Juan had manufactured, the children 
could scarcely have borne that walk. Amigo called 
a halt whenever they passed a tree of any kind, 
and lingered in its shade as long as he could. 
Once only did they permit themselves the luxury of 
a sip of water, but happening to turn, they caught 
the wistful expression of Amigo's face, which said, 
as plainly as words could have done, ' ' Can't you 
spare me a drink from that canteen — just one?" 
And they stopped several times to relieve his 
thirst. It was very unselfish in them, for they 
greatly coveted every drop, but they were doubly 
repaid ; first by the dog's gratitude, and the very- 
evident benefit he derived from the drink, and 
then by an occurrence of which I shall speak 
presently. 

But even that trying, almost unbearable day, 
which realized the force of the Arabian proverb 
likening great heat to the wrath of God, came to 
an end at last. Nita, almost fainting under the 
fiery trial, had thought it as endless as it was cruel ; 
while poor Juan, burdened with his bow and blan- 
ket, more than once had felt ready to drop by the 
wayside. 

How thankful they were when the shadows 
began to lengthen, and they saw that the sun had 
almost run its course ! Before it set, Juan, who 
seemed to have eyes set all around his head like a 
fly, caught sight of a faint cloud on the horizon — a 
thin pillar of smoke, very distant, and so indis- 
tinct that it was some moments before Nita could 
make it out. 



"There, there! off to the right! Don't you 
see it?" said Juan eagerly. "It is the Comanches ! 
I knew they would think I had gone that way." 

The smoke of that camp-fire lifted a great dread 
from the minds of both, and with the effusiveness 
of their race, they fell into each others' arms, and 
embraced and kissed each other, while tears of 
joy streamed down their cheeks. 

"Ah!" said Juan, as he drew a long, free 
breath, and continued to gaze at the smoky monu- 
ment of his deliverance from the house of bond- 
age, " I have given you the dodge ! Catch me 
now if you can, Casteel ! " 

His eyes sparkled gayly as he spoke, and he 
walked as though his day's march had just begun. 
As for Nita, her face more than reflected his hap- 
piness, and tired as she was, she actually danced 
for joy. 

"Adios, Casteel ! Adios todos ! "* she cried out, 
waving her little brown hand toward the camp ; 
and then with a note of regret in her voice she 
added, "Adios, Shaneco! — Shaneco was kind 
to us, Juan. I shall never forget that." 

"We shall never see them any more," said 
Juan. "We can walk where we please now, on 
hard ground or soft, in sand or mud. And we can 
take our own time, and need not travel in the 
middle of the day. And do you say now that we 
shall never see our mother, Nita? Viva! Viva! 
Viva!" f Nita joined in this shout, and Amigo, 
not understanding the demonstration, barked once 
or twice by way of question ; then seeing fronvthe 
children's faces that the excitement was a joyous 
one, he tried feebly to frisk, whereupon both the 
children embraced him, and declared that he was 
the dearest dog in the world, the most intelligent, 
the most affectionate, and the handsomest. When 
Amigo had duly responded to these flattering 
speeches, Juan remembered that he had seen a 
creek just before this great discovery, and that he 
had meant to explore it. 

"It looks very dry," he said, when they reached 
it, "but it is running in the direction of our route, 
and we may have the luck to find some water. I 
would give a buffalo-robe, if I had it. for a good 
drink. I am almost choked, Nita." 

He spoke cheerfully, but had little expectation 
of coming upon a pool, and what hope he had 
dwindled as he went on and saw that the shallow 
stream had disappeared as completely as though 
it had never existed. All at once, when Juan had 
grown very serious under the gravity of the respon- 
sibility he had assumed, and was thinking with 
dismay of his empty canteen and wallet, Amigo 
bounded past him and began trotting along with 
his nose close to the ground, sniffing excitedly 
here and there. 



' Farewell, Casteel ! Farewell, all ! 



t " Hurrah ! Hu 



JUAN AND J U A N I T A . 



287 



"What is he after?" asked Nita ; but before 
Juan could reply, Amigo had stopped near some 
big rocks, and had begun scratching in the sand 
with all his might and main. 

"Water ! " shouted Juan. And he was right; 
for, when he and Nita fell on their knees, and be- 
gan scooping out the sand from the hole Amigo 
had made, they found in a little while that the 
sand was no longer dry, but wet, a fact that put 
so much energy into their efforts that they soon 
dug down to fresh water. Amigo's instinct had 
divined the hidden spring and had saved them, 
as they had saved him, much suffering. Hunger 
was far more endurable, now that thirst no longer 
tormented them ; and, infinitely refreshed, if wo- 
fully hungry, they betook themselves to bed — not 
a bed of roses, but one of dried grasses. 

How their fond mother's heart would have 
yearned over them if she could have seen those 
two little figures lying out there, under the stars, 
in tranquil sleep, completely at the mercy of the 
world, environed by a thousand dangers, yet for 
the time as safe in that lonely wilderness as in 
the most populous city ! 

Whether it was that Amigo did not arouse them, 
or that the fear of Comanches no longer troubled 
their dreams, the sun was quite high before either 
Juan or Nita stirred. Their breakfast was not a very 
elaborate one, consisting only of a drink of water 
apiece, and they were detained only until the can- 
teen could be filled. 

"We shall get to the peak before sunset," said 
Juan, " and 1 am sure there is plenty of game in the 
hills. I will kill enough to last us for many days ; 
so cheer up, mi hermanita .* We are not going to 
starve while I have Shaneco's bow and so much as 
a single arrow left." 

" I am not so very hungry, Juan. I shall do 
very well to-day. I had more than you did from 
the wallet, and I feel quite strong," said Nita 
brightly. " I don't mind anything, now that Cas- 
teel is not behind us." 

" Oh, that is all right ! They will not follow us 
any farther, but will go home," replied Juan. And 
this was what happened. 

The Indians probably thought that their rebel- 
lious captives would certainly die in the wilderness, 
either by violence or from starvation ; and, con- 
tent with this vengeance, they gave up the chase, 
and returned to their encampment on the clear 
forks of the Brazos. If they had not been under 
treaty just then with the United States, they might 
have made the search for Juan and Nita a side- 
issue of one of their raids. In that event, the chil- 
dren would almost certainly have been recaptured ; 
but as it was, it did not seem worth their pursuers' 
while to go to anv more trouble to catch and kill 



two children who, as the vengeful Casteel declared, 
were sure to perish if left to themselves. 

There was a kind of rivalry between the brother 
and sister all that morning as to which should 
seem least to have felt the fatigue and deprivations 
of the last few days. It was well for both that they 
had learned fortitude in a severe school, or they 
would certainly have broken down under an exact 
repetition of the previous days' experience. They 
never could have borne it if they had been accus- 
tomed to a life of luxury and indulgence, and had 
been tenderly nurtured. 

A feature of Comanche discipline was to make 
the older children do without sleep or food for as 
long as their instructors thought necessary ; an- 
other consisted in making them perform arduous 
tasks and run or walk great distances while de- 
prived of their natural rest, or while fasting. The 
warriors of the future, of course, underwent more 
severe tests than the girls, whose lives were to be 
more inglorious and homely ; but all were in some 
measure subjected to these disagreeable educational 
influences. 

So now, although our poor babes in the woods 
were footsore, weary and hungry, they made no 
complaint, but with great patience and courage 
trudged on, hour after hour, under the burning 
sun, stopping when they could go no farther and 
taking such refreshment as the sickening warm 
water in the canteen afforded. 

By noon they had made their way to a small 
thicket of mesquite about five miles from the peak. 
This offered a relief from the distressing glare of 
the plain rather than anything that could be 
called shade ; and here the children dropped down 
on the hot earth, without strength enough to have 
carried them another yard — every vital force 
completely exhausted for the time. The confi- 
dence with which Juan had started out had van- 
ished like the morning dew under that terrible sun. 
It seemed to him that they had lain down to die. 
How was he to know that there was game in the 
hills? How were they ever to get there? What 
were they to do for water, now that the canteen 
was again empty ? 

Too proud to express his dejection, and not in 
the least understanding that it arose from physical 
causes, Juan turned his back on poor little Nita, 
threw his arm up over his head, and lay perfectly 
motionless for so long that she became seriously 
uneasy. When she could stand this strange con- 
duct no longer, she pulled anxiously at her brother's 
sleeve, saying, " Juan ! Juan ! What is the mat- 
ter with you? Are you ill? Open your eyes! 
Look at me ! Answer me ! " 

But Juan would not answer, and still hid his 
face. He did not know that he was distressing 



1 My little sister.' 



288 



J U AN AND J U ANITA. 




"jUAN HAD TO PULL JUANITA AWAY FROM THE SPRING." (SEE PAGE 285.) 



Nita, and he wished to be as miserable as he "Oh, oh! Mi madre ! Mi mad re .' Quiero mi 

pleased. Presently a wail of despair reached him, madreJ"* sobbed the unhappy child. Her love 

and, turning over, he saw Nita weeping piteously, for Juan and ~her admiration of him were un- 

overcome by visions of Juan dying and dead, bounded ; she had perfect faith in his ability to 

leaving her alone in the wilderness. do anything and everything ; but when that sup- 

* "My mother! My mother ! I want my mother ! " 



i88 7 ." 



JUAN AND JUANITA. 



289 



port failed her, she collapsed altogether, so accus- 
tomed was she to lean her whole weight on him. 
Juan was evidently hopeless or very ill, and, in 
either event, she was miserable. The sight of his 
dear little sister's wretchedness appealed so strongly 
to Juan's manly and generous nature, that he sat 
up at once and affected a great deal more liveliness 
than he felt. 

"Pobrecita .' (Poor little girl!) what is it? Don't 
cry. You will see our mother soon ; what afflicts 
you?" he demanded, soothingly. "Ah! you are 
starved, poor child ! You are thirsty, and tired to 
death. Oh, if I only had some water and food for 
you ! " And he threw himself down again on his 
back with a deep sigh. Now it was Nita's turn to 
comfort him, but although he got some strength 
from her affection, her assurances that all would 
yet be well did not find much of an echo. 

It was now getting a little cooler, and the world 
was less like a vast oven. Amigo, who had been 
stretched out comfortably under a tree, and had 
stood the day's journey better than they had ex- 
pected, came up to Juan and snuffed about him 
restlessly, doubtless with the intention of admon- 
ishing him that they ought to be off again. But 
Juan did not move, and had not the energy to 
respond to any such demand. Even when the 
afternoon had almost all gone, he continued to lie 
there, inert, a prey to gloomy doubts and fears. 

When he did get up, it was with a bound that 
brought him to his feet at once (and of which he 
would not have believed himself capable a moment 
before). "Look! look! " he cried, pointing above 
them. Obeying, Nita saw overhead, beautifully 
outlined against a deep-blue sky, a large flock of 
snow-white doves flying toward the peak. 

" It is near sundown ; they are seeking water 
and a place to roost. See how straight they are fly- 
ing toward the hills ! We will follow. I was right. 
It can't be very far. Come on, Nita," said Juan, 
all his interest excited now. "I will help you, if 
you can't get along by yourself." 

Led by this lovely band of birds, the children 

{To he 



struggled bravely and hopefully on for another 
mile, when they were still further cheered to see, 
about a half mile beyond them, a long line of pine- 
trees, which they knew must be growing on the 
banks of a stream or lake. Amazed now at the 
frame of mind that had produced his recent 
profound depression, and delighted to know that 
succor was so close at hand, Juan never stopped, 
except to encourage his companions, until they 
had reached one of those clear, swift, charming 
streams in which that region abounds. 

As they approached it, a deer occasionally 
bounded off in front of them, or a drove of turkeys 
went whirring aside out of their way; but although 
both Juan and Nita strung their bows, neither 
could get near enough for a shot. Amigo started 
a rabbit and gave it a close race, but with no bet- 
ter result. There seemed little chance of their 
getting a supper, and they were blue enough 
about it ; but when they reached the river, what 
should they see but quantities of fish almost ask- 
ing to be caught. 

Scarcely stopping to bathe his face or get a 
drink, Juan promptly cut a willow pole, fastened 
his line to it, found a grasshopper, baited his hook, 
and cast out into the stream, while Nita, sure of 
the result, ran about with surprising alacrity pick- 
ing up dry wood for a fire. Juan had not to wait 
long for a bite ; for such was the touching prime- 
val innocence of the fish, that no sooner did the 
grasshopper light on the water, than there was a 
grand rush and scramble among them to get it. 

A large, fine trout was soon flopping about on 
the gravelly margin of the river. Two others 
joined it in swift succession ; and, too hungry to 
wait another moment, Juan dropped his pole, 
seized these, cleaned them, cut them up, ran sticks 
through each morsel, and, with Nita's help, soon 
had them in front of the fire. 

It seemed to them that the fish would never be 

cooked, but at last they were done. And oh, how 

brown, crisp, delicious, incomparable they were, 

and what a feast it was to these hungry wanderers ! 

ontiimcd.) 




Vol. XIV.— 19. 



290 



THE MINISTERING CHILDREN S LEAGUE. 



THE MINISTERING CHILDREN'S LEAGUE. 




LADY in England 
was reading a 
book called 
"Minister in g 
Children." As 
she read, she- 
thought: "This 
tells me of only 
a few young peo- 
ple who tried to 
think of others 
rather than of 
themselves, and 
who were happi- 
est when helping 
poor, sad folk 
who needed to 
have sunshine 
broughtintolheir 
dark houses. We 
must nut have 
few," said she, 
"but many such 
young helpers. Where shall they be found ? " 

When this lady thinks, she very quickly begins 
to act. There is so much to be done in this big, 
busy world, that she believes there is not one 
moment to lose. 

"Yes," she thought, " there is much to do, but 
there are many loving hearts, clever fingers, and 
ready feet willing to work. I will try to have an 
army of young volunteers to fight againt selfish- 
ness, idleness, sickness, and poverty, who shall 
' go about doing good.' The name of the corps 
shall be the ' Ministering Children's League ' — 
a band of helpers ! On their banner shall be the 
words, 'No day without a deed to crown it,' and 
this shall be the rule of their lives." 

Before very long a number of recruits were gath- 
ered together, who came to be drilled at the lady's 
house in London. Soldiers must, of course, first 
be taught their duty ; and these young soldiers 
were very eager to learn, and they all had the 
same wondering question to ask : 
" What are we to do ? " 
They heard this simple answer : 
" Deeds of kindness ! " 

It sounded so cheery and pleasant, that a smile 
beamed on every face. We all like to be kind — 
shall I say, now and then ? — Sometimes we all like 
to be cross and disagreeable, but young warriors 
must fight against self and conquer their selfish 
thoughts. This, however, is a difficult task, and 



the kind commanding officer knew how hard her 
army would find it, and had, therefore, provided a 
very short prayer to be used every Sunday morn- 
ing, and very often besides. Every one then 
received a card of membership to prove that he 
or she had joined the happy League. Plain words 
that all could understand were spoken. Kind 
friends suggested first one thing, and then another ; 
and at last, with many hearty good wishes for suc- 
cess and victory, the " marching orders " were 
given, and the band was dismissed. The members 
left regretfully, yet went eagerly to their different 
homes to begin the work of love, with the prom- 
ise of a " grand review " at the same house at 
some future time. 

There is a work for all to do ; for the big and for 
the little people, for boys and for girls. Do you 
ask what work? Think for one moment. You 
probably have comfortable homes, with every 
breakfast, dinner, and tea nicely prepared for you ; 
you have warm clothing provided for you ; you 
have loving parents and friends filling your lives 
with gladness. Ah ! but not very far away from 
you, men, women, and children live, who have very 
little to eat, very little to wear, and very few to love 
them. Why are they there, so near your doors? 
I think for you to help, to cheer, to comfort. If you 
have not paid them a visit, you do not yet know 
what true pleasure is. In those humble homes warm 
welcomes and pleasant smiles are always ready for 
the ministering child who has given a little time 
from play, a little money, a little thought to add 
to the happiness of others. If you can not go 
yourselves, you can send or bring your offerings to 
what is called a "Branch meeting," which means 
a gathering of some of the members of the " Min- 
istering Children's League," held at some house 
where they meet together and bring their work, 
and hear what is to be done in the future. And 
this reminds me of the "grand review " of the 
young volunteers in England. 

It took place in January, 1886, exactly a year after 
the "corps " was first formed. The young soldiers, 
boys and girls, came trooping into the same house 
where they had met before, and were welcomed by 
the same lady whose kind, loving thought had first 
brought them together. You will like to know 
that only a few weeks before, this lady, Lady 
Brabazon, had returned from the United States 
and Canada, where she had spent three very 
happy months, and where she had found many 
true, hospitable friends. There were nearly one 
hundred children present at the review, not one 



THE MINISTERING CHILDREN" S LEAGUE. 



l 9 l 



empty-handed ; all had brought something to prove 
they had tried to be good soldiers and true to 
the words on their banner. I think you would 
have laughed to have seen one small boy wheel- 
ing before him a doll's perambulator, nearly large 
enough to hold himself; another clutched in his 
arms a big, red scrapbook full of bright pictures 
ready to gladden the heart of many a poor, sick 
child. Indeed, I heard that in one hospital the 
beloved scrapbook was lost for a time, and was at 
last found under a poor little sufferer who had 
been carefully lying on it, for fear it should be 
taken from him. The girls brought pretty frocks 
and pinafores, pillows stuffed with paper, dolls 
nicely dressed ; there were toys new and old, some 
fresh, others neatly mended. I must tell you of 
one parcel that pleased me very much ; it contained 
a petticoat made of thick, warm stuff, with a nice 
bodice to it, but sewn on to the top were three 
bags filled with candies and tied with neat ribbons. 
Well, there were so many really beautiful things, I 
can not describe them all to you ; there were little 
dolls' bedsteads made by a clever boy ; there were 
woolen scarfs to defy Jack Frost's cold fingers, and 
thick gloves and socks for the same purpose. 

Lady Brabazon was waiting to speak to her 
young guests, and they sat down and listened. 
Let me tell you some of the kind words she said. 

She began by telling them about her pleasant 
journey to America, and of the Branches of the 
League she hoped soon to hear were formed 
there. At Toronto, she said, there had already- 
been a meeting in its behalf, and in Ottawa there 
were good friends all anxious to forward the cause. 
In the United States a kind lady had undertaken 
to take charge of the League in that country. * 



Lady Brabazon then went on to speak of the 
real work of the League, to which all very thought- 
fully listened. 

Obedience, she said, is the first duty of a soldier, 
and she reminded the children of their duly to their 
parents — not a dull, sullen, slow, unwilling obe- 
dience, but a bright, quick, glad and ready obedi- 
ence, that delights to do whatever dear Father 
and Mother wish. How could children not long 
to obey these loving friends, who have taken such 
care of them since they were wee little babies, 
and who never let an hour in any day pass with- 
out planning for their happiness and welfare ? It 
should be a pleasure for the young soldiers to be 
able to minister to them and to help them. 

Home, Lady Brabazon then went on to say, is a 
very useful field of action for young soldiers. It 
is their little world. But although their deeds of 
kindness are to begin there, they must not end 
there. 

She urged them to make their teachers happy, by 
learning their lessons well, and trying, by diligence 
and care, not to give them any more trouble than 
is absolutely necessary. She urged them to be 
sentinels, ever on watch — to keep their eyes wide 
open, so as never to miss the opportunity of help- 
ing somebody in some way ; to make it a rule, if 
possible, to give up at least ten minutes out of play- 
time, each day, to work for children whose wants 
are far greater than their own ; to try never to lie 
down at night without having done at least one 
kind deed during the day ! 

Before saying good-bye, all joined in singing a 
hymn. And then they went home, every volun- 
teer, I hope, more determined than ever to be 
tirue to the motto on the banner of the League. 



* See page 318. 



A MEMBER. 




Never, never a day should pass 
Without some kindness kindly shown ; 
This is a motto, dear laddie and lass, 
To think upon daily and take for your own. 



292 



AMONG THE GAS -WELLS. 



[February, 



AMONG THE GAS-WELLS. 
By Samuel W. Hall. 




BOL'T hvc years ago, some 
drillers, in Washington 
County, Pennsylvania, aft- 
er long weeks of hard labor in their search for oil, 
had reached at a great depth the "oil-sand" — 
long questioned as existing in that region. They 
were happy ; and, as the drill hurried down into the 
sandrock, their long and patient efforts were re- 
warded by an immense flow of — natural-gas. As 
the heavy drill and cable came flying out of the 
well, forced up by the gas, which poured forth with 
a deafening rush and roar, the drillers looked on 
with sad hearts and long faces — in fact, with utter 
disgust. They had indeed opened up a gusher, but it 
was a" gas-gusher." They did n't want gas. They 
had drilled for oil, and it was oil they had hoped 
to get. They waited some weeks, hoping the gas- 
supply would be exhausted ; but it was a vain hope. 
This was the great " McGugin Well" — one of 
the largest gas-wells yet discovered. It was fired, 
and for months blazed skyward, if not " born to 
blush unseen," at least to waste its brightness 
on the desert air, except so far as it was of use in 
lighting up all the country around, and in furnish- 
ing a novel attraction, day and night, to countless 
excursion parties from near and far. Other wells 
were drilled, with a like result ; and these contin- 
ued discoveries of gas, in connection with some 
others made near Pittsburg, led to the "natural- 
gas craze," which took possession of the whole 
Pittsburg region for some time. Natural-gas as a 
fuel for mills and furnaces and dwelling-houses has 



great advantages, and promised large profits to the 
owners of the wells. Accordingly, the spring and 
summer of 1884 witnessed a frantic forming of 
companies and drilling of wells and laying of pipes 
along the streets and roads, the highways and 
byways, until cautious people almost held their 
breath. Pittsburg, as the great central furnace, 
was especially interested in the new fuel ; and, 
besides wells sunk within the city, several lines 
of pipe, some twenty or thirty miles long, have 
been laid to bring in the gas from the great wells 
mentioned, and from others in different localities. 

For mill-purposes, the gas is distributed under 
the boilers, and wherever needed, by a system of 
small pipes, the blaze supplying the heat directly ; 
but for household uses, in stoves and fireplaces, 
the gas-pipe is usually placed at the bottom of the 
grates, which are filled above with something to 
receive and hold the heat. In rooms where the 
open grate, burning the soft bituminous coal, has 
always been used, a pleasing variety in the ar- 
rangement of gas-fires is found. Some people do 
away with the grate altogether, and supplant it 
with a clever imitation in cast-iron of the old-time 
back-log. But the commonly accepted plan is to 
retain the grate, filling it generally with coarsely 
broken fire-brick, which, when heated, looks much 
like anthracite coal. Foundry-slag, properly ar- 
ranged, presents a perfect representation of a soft- 
coal fire, and is, therefore, more beautiful and desir- 
able. Others resort to the novel plan of filling their 
grates with porcelain door-knobs, for which purpose 
they are bought by the peck or bushel ! The quan- 
tity of gas burned is regulated by a valve at each fire- 
place ; and the ease with which a gas-fire is made, 
regulated, and put out, coupled with its freedom 
from smoke, dust, and ashes, has warmed the heart 
of womankind toward it with a very great affection. 

Boring for gas is exactly like boring for oil,* 
in all its workings ; but the after-operations of 
pumping and packing, as in the case of some 
oil-wells to raise the oil, are not necessary in gas- 
wells. If the gas is there, it will come up of its 
own free will and accord, and come with a rush, 
blowing tools and everything else out of the well 
before it. Indeed, gas men would often be as 
glad to keep their treasure down as oil men are to 
get theirs up. The great pressure at which it is 
confined in the earth, and the corresponding force 
with which it escapes from the well, make it some- 



* See article entitled " Boring for Oil," in St. Nicholas for November. 188 



i88 7 .j 



AMONG THE GAS-WELLS. 



293 



what hard to manage or control. This pressure is 
enormous —as high as five hundred pounds to the 
square inch in some cases where it has been gauged. 
In the great McGugin well, which was not gauged, 
the pressure is estimated to have reached eight 
hundred pounds to the square inch. Any attempt 
to confine the gas in this well for the purpose of 
measuring it would doubtless have resulted in 
sending the iron casing flying from the well, or in 



as it comes from the wells is about forty-five de- 
grees, Fahrenheit. 

A burning gas-well is a grand sight. The gas 
is carried in pipes to a safe distance from the der- 
rick, to be fired. When lighted, a huge column 
of flame shoots skyward, sometimes higher than 
the derrick. At times it is swept bv the wind 
along the ground, burning it bare -nd dry. The 
hissing and roaring are almost fi; fitful, and can 




producing other effects more startling and costly 
than satisfactory or agreeable. Indeed, until re- 
cently, no plan had been devised by which the 
flow of gas from a well could be stopped or re- 
duced. The quantity of gas that escapes from 
some wells is enormous, but probably no cor- 
rect estimate of it has yet been made. Where 
the gas is "piped" away to mills and houses, all 
that comes from the well may be used; but if it is 
not all used, the remainder must be allowed to 
escape into the air. This is done at the regu- 
lator, where it is burned. The regulator is an 
arrangement of pipes and valves, placed between 
the gas-well and the town supplied with the gas. 
It allows only just as much gas as is being burned 
in the town to go on through the pipes, and so 
reduces to a proper and safe point the dangerously 
high pressure of the gas as it comes rushing 
along from the well. The temperature of the gas 



be heard many miles away. The night glare, too, 
of a burning gusher has been seen at a distance 
of thirty miles. The illustration on the next page 
represents a near view, at night. From a dis- 
tance, we see the great glare in the sky, with the 
hills and woods outlined against it. On a clear, 
still night the glare is steady, and fades gradually 
away, above and around. But on a cloudy, stormy 
night the scene changes. The banks of clouds 
catch the light, and reflect a deep red glare, soft- 
ening away in the distant parts to a yellowish 
tint, sometimes growing dull and faint, and anon 
flashing up and brightening, as the wind now beats 
down the flame and again lifts it skyward. A 



294 



AMONG THE GAS-WELLS. 



[February, 




LIGHTING A GAS-WELL WITH A ROMAN-CANDLE. 



group of burning wells north of Washington, Pa., 
has presented many grand and beautiful night- 
scenes. Though several miles apart, they appear, 
at a distance, to be close together, and their light 
intermingles. On a dark night, with all of them 
burning, they make a great show. These wells 
in full blast — with those flanking them on the 
right and on the left, with the broad glare of those 
at Wellsburg, W. Va., showing twenty miles to 
the northwest, and with those at Murraysville, 
Pa., thirty miles to the northeast — make a scene 
which would terrify a stranger, if he should 
come upon it unaware of the existence of such 
things as burning gas-wells. It would only need 
columis of fierv lava to convince him that the 



whole region was full of volcanoes. And his terror 
would doubtless be complete when he saw a great 
fiery column shoot skyward, unless he was made 
aware of the real cause of the phenomenon, when 
he would remain to admire what a moment before 
had filled him with alarm. The explanation of the 
sudden burst of flame is that it is necessary often to 
" blow out " the wells and the pipes leading to the 
regulator, to keep them from being clogged by the 
salt which gathers in the pipes from the salt-water 
thrown up by the gas. The flow of the gas is 
stopped for a moment ; and when again released, 
the gas drives everything before it into the open 
air. This escaping gas is burned at the regulator. 
The effect of the suddenly increased pressure is to 



i88 7 .j 



AMONG THE GAS-WELLS. 



295 



comets, and the one first 
seen was quite generally 
mistaken for a comet. 
Each one of these is 
caused by a burning gas- 
well. The light of the 
wellshines upon thesmall 
ice-crystals which quite 
often are floating in the 
air, far above us, and 
is by them reflected, or 
thrown down again, so 
that we see it, though the 
gas-well may be many 
miles from us. Every 
well furnishes but one 
"comet," — as we may 
call it, for want of a 
better name, — which al- 
ways appears in the 
same place. When the 
lower air also is filled with 
ice-crystals, we see not 
the comets, but great, 
fiery streaks, the com- 
plete reflections, that 




shoot a tongue of flame, 
hissing and roaring, 
high in air. On a misty 
night, when the light is 
broken up and diffused, 
— the snow-covered hills 
sometimes adding their 
reflection, — the whole 
sky is brilliantly illumi- 
nated, and the scene is 
grand and beautiful. 

Now, let us take a 
look at another very 
beautiful and strange 
sight, before going to 
bed. Often in the win- 
ter there may be seen 
in the gas region, far 
up in the sky at night, 
one or more faint white 
streaks, six or eight feet 
long. They look like 



A NATl'RAL GAS-LIGHT ON THE WAYSIDE. 



296 



AMONG THE GAS-WELLS. 



f February, 




THE SEVEN FIERY COLUMNS, VISIBLE FROM WASHINGTON, PA. 



reach from the points where the comets were, 
down across the sky to the horizon at the points 
where we see the glare of the distant gas-wells. 

We see something of the same kind below instead 
of above us, in the fiery belt which appears when 
we look across a wide, dark stream at a light upon 
the shore. But there is a unique strangeness and 
beauty about these fiery columns in the sky. They 
stand out boldly against the dark background, 
like great, fiery rods, a central bright streak, or 
spine, running through them, which shades off 
into a beautiful glowing red on each side. They are 



regular in shape, apparently about twenty inches 
wide, the sides straight, the top slightly rounded, 
and the bottom fading away, as it reaches the 
flame, in the glare of the well. 

No description nor pictures of these comets and 
fiery columns can give a true idea of their strange 
beauty, which does not become commonplace by 
reason of a regular, every day — or rather, every 
night — appearance, as these phenomena are visible 
only under certain favorable conditions. Those 
still, chilly nights, when the sky has a hazy appear- 
ance, when a few scattering flakes of crisp, dry 



i88 7 ] 



AMONG THE GAS-WELLS. 



297 



snow may be fluttering down, are 
the nights upon which the finest 
displays are seen ; and several 
nights ma\' intervene between 
these curious and beautiful ex- 
hibitions. Sometimes the comets 
will appear directly overhead, 
and the fiery columns often reach 
to a great height, depending, of 
course, 011 the distance of the ob- 
server from the source of illumi- 
nation. Recently the top of one 
of these reflections was estimated 
to be six and a half miles above 
the burning well. 

As they stand thus in the sky, 
the effect is at first sight startling; 
indeed, there is a feeling akin to 
awe mingling with the sense of 
admiration as we look at them. 
We are reminded of the ''pillar 
of fire," which led the Israelites 
out of Egypt ; and if we stop to 
think of the great changes, the 
mighty forces, and the wonderful 
laws entering into the production 
of the strange scene before us, 
these modern pillars of fire will 
seem scarcely less remarkable to 
us than does the ancient miracle. 



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THE GLARE OF THE MCGLTGIN WELL ON A CLOUDY NIGHT. 



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THREE 'COMETS AT ONCE. 



298 



MRS. FEATHERTAIL AND SQUIRE FUZZ. 



[February, 



MRS. FEATHERTAIL AND SQUIRE FUZZ. 
By .Mrs. James Herbert Morse. 



It was built, of course, for horses. It had stalls 
and hay-lofts and cows' accommodations at one end. 
In the corner was a big closet, where there was a 
carpenter's bench, which was called " the shop." 

It was a large, comfortable barn, with plenty 
of room for wagons and carriages. When Uncle 
John bought it, it had been empty for six years, 
and the only live thing in it was a woodpecker, 
who stuck his head out of a hole in the cupola, 
and called to everybody who came by. Uncle 
John said he was bidding us welcome, but it 
sounded to me more as if he said, "Go 'long! 
Who are you ? " 

Oh, I forgot to say — a little way from the 
barn, there 's a house that belongs to it. But 
that is n't of much account, and there 's no need 
to describe it. We sleep and have our meals 
there, and there are plenty of rooms, if you count 
in the attic, for Uncle John and Aunt Rachel and 
my cousins, Ruth, Jim and Will, and me. And 
there is a spare room that never is to spare because 
it 's always crowded. Ruth is a young lady, and 
Jim and Will are little shavers. My name is 
Augustus and I am ten and three-quarters. 

Uncle John has n't any animals, but you need n't 
think we don't use the barn. Ruth paints, and so 
she persuaded Uncle John to let her fix it up for 
a studio. Aunt Rachel gave her a lot of old duds, 
and she scared up two or three spinning-wheels, 
an old-fashioned settle, and no end of things. 

So, if you go into the barn, don't forget yourself 
and call the draperies bed-spreads, or the divan a 
cot (and a rickety one at that !), or the ottomans 
old trunks ! And be careful what you call the 
paintings! For Ruth does n't paint pictures — oh, 
no ! They are impressions ! And they are not 
good for anything unless they are all daubs. I '11 
tell you how she does 'em. I " pose " for her, so 
I know. First she screws up her eyes and squints 
at me for two minutes, walking about all the 
time. That is choosing the "point of view." 
Next she plants her easel, takes a piece of charcoal 
in one hand and a bit of chamois in the other, and 
squares off. Then it 's scratch ! scratch! scratch! 
three steps back, square off, and a squint to see if 
it 's right. It never is, till it has been wiped out a 
great many times with the chamois, but that is no 
matter, because it 's as easy as nothing to scratch 
it in again, and it 's never more than fifteen or 
twenty minutes before she is done with the cham- 



ois and charcoal, and is hard at it with the paints. 
When they begin, there 's a great deal more squar- 
ing off with daubs and smutches, and a sweep be- 
tween. If you want to know how to do it — get the 
brush as full as it will hold, and just smear it on 
as quick as lightning, and you are all right. The 
best thing about it is that it does n't take long to 
pose, and I get lots of nice things for doing it. 

Well, that very first summer at Bonny Haven 
she painted one picture that I liked. She has 
gone on making "impressions" ever since, but 
she has n't improved a single bit. That one pict- 
ure is the only good one she ever did or ever will 
do, and I offered her everything I had for it, but 
she would n't give it to me. It was a picture of 
the first chipmunk we tamed. We called him 
"Squire Fuzz." Ruth was at work then on a 
monstrous piece of canvas, painting a picture of 
Mark Antony making his speech to the Romans, 
and I offered not only to pose for Antony, but to 
dress up in different costumes, and pose for the 
whole rabble if she would only give me that little 
speck of a picture of the Squire — but she wouldn't ! 

Jim is a queer mixture of an owl and a goose. 
Sometimes he thinks so hard and seems to know 
so much that Uncle John calls him " The Philos- 
opher," or "Aristotle." Then, at other times, he 
behaves as if he had only just been born and 
did n't know anything. 

One afternoon Cousin Ruth was in the barn, 
taking down an impression of me like two-forty on 
a plank road, when she spied the squirrel and told 
me softly not to move, with me standing on tip- 
toe, one foot held up behind by a string and 
nothing but .1 hammock-hook to steady a fellow! 
I was posing for Mercury that time. But I stuck 
it out a whole minute after she spoke, until Chippy 
had packed his pouches. Every boy has read 
lots of stories about squirrels filling their cheeks 
with nuts and corn, but it 's a very different thing 
to see them do it. The way they turn a nut over to 
see which way it will fit in best, bite off the sharp 
points, pack and unpack, until everything suits — 
I tell you, even Grandpa and Professor Mo flit will 
watch that half an hour at a time ! Well, Jim 
came out just as we were wishing with all our 
mights that he would, and Ruth said it was more 
fun to watch his face than to see anything ever got 
up in Barnum's circus. 

After that, we kept a pile of nuts and corn in a 



MRS. FEATHERTAIL AND SQUIRE FUZZ. 



299 



particular spot which we called the Squire's larder, 
and he soon learned to go to it regularly. In a 
week he seemed to know us all, and although the 
grown folks called him " the children's pet," they 
cared about him just as much as we did. Aunt 
Rachel used to take visitors out to the barn to see 
Ruth's sketches, but that was only an excuse. 
They would look half a minute at the pictures, 
but they would think nothing of watching the 
squirrel half an hour. There were Grandpa and 




SQUIRE FUZZ PACKS HIS POUCHES. 

Professor Moffit ! They were great friends, and 
were always talking or reading to each other about 
things that nobody but professors understand. 
Grandpa knows as much as a professor. The Pro- 
fessor had a piece in one of the magazines, and he 
and Grandpa spent most of their time talking 
about it, until Squire Fuzz came. Then I noticed 
they would have their discussions in the barn in- 
stead of everywhere else, and right in the midst 
of the longest words in the dictionary you 'd hear 
one of them say, "Hush! there he is!" — and 
it was easy enough to understand their English 
after that. Once the squirrel disappeared for a 
week, and they were just as sorry as anybody. 
They found Jim sitting by the Squire's larder, with 
his face to the wall, making believe he was reading 
"Robinson Crusoe." Jim 's a regular brick, and 
would n't let anybody see him cry for anything. 
He cares so much that I 've taught him a trick 
about it. If you shut your teeth together, hold 
your breath, and say "Jessy Giminy" to yourself 
seven times, it '11 keep off a cry splendidly ! But 
it did n't that time. Jim was nearly black in the 
face with holding his breath, and he told me after- 



ward that he had said " Jessy Giminy" more than 
a hundred times, but the tears mould spill out ; and 
when the poor little shaver was picked up and 
got a chance to hide his face in Grandpa's waist- 
coat, he just roared ! Professor Moffit is a very 
kind man. He leaned over and patted Jim on the 
back, and said : 

"Be consoled, James, my boy. Your missing 
favorite is a specimen of the Sciurus striatus, and 
is probably concealed in a subterraneous burrow 
in the immediate vicinity of this barn. It is not 
unlikely that he may re-appear." 

/ did n't see anything in that so very encourag- 
ing, but Jim took his head out of Grandpa's waist- 
coat right off, and asked the Professor to say it 
again, and he wiped his face so quick that I got 
Professor Moffit to write down what he said, so 
that I might leam it, for Sciurus striatus was better 
than "Jessy Giminy." 

It was then that I offered to pose for the Roman 
rabble, and I know Ruth missed a good chance. 
I said to her : 

" ' Stock 's riz,' Ruth, on that picture, and you 
had better sell it now. If the Squire shows so 
much as the tip of his tail, your stock '11 go down 
quicker than he can scud. But if you wait too long, 
the market '11 fail you, for all the people who have 
the capital are grown up, and everybody knows 
they are n't to be depended on for constancy — 
when it comes to animals, I mean. If it were a 
portrait of me, now," I said, " it would be differ- 
ent. If I were the rabble, why, the stock on that 
picture would keep on going up, higher and 
higher, and an accident to me would be worth lots 
to you ! You 'd get orders for, at least, a dozen 
copies ! " But I could n't move her. 

And she lost the chance ! — for, in a week, 
when the family went out of mourning, the Squire 
came back, and another squirrel came too. The 
Squire had a funny little short tail, but the new 
"chip" had a long one, so we named her " Mrs. 
Feathertail." She was scared out of her life, and 
it took longer to tame her, because the Squire was 
such a savage. He seemed to think our barn be- 
longed to him, and that all we were born for was 
to feed him. If Mrs. Feathertail showed herself, 
he 'd drop his provender as if it was red-hot, 
and scoot after her like a shot. She had to hide 
until he was out of the way, and then she 'd come 
in, shivering and shaking, pack her pouches as full 
as they could hold, and sneak off. But she grew 
bolder by degrees, and at last was as tame as the 
Squire. They both grew so tame that they thought 
nothing of running up Ruth's back while she was 
sketching, and they could find the hickory nuts 
wherever we chose to hide them — in our pock- 
ets, neckties, boots, or on top of our heads. 



300 



MRS. FEATHERTAIL AND SQUIRE FUZZ. 



[Fee 




They seemed to think people were just walking 
trees, and they would take a trip up anybody who 
came along. Once a peddler walked into the barn 
and, before he could speak, Squire Fuzz darted 
up his left leg, around his belt, and down his other 
leg. He was so surprised that he forgot what he 
had come for, and when Ruth asked him, lie 
laughed out and said, " I 'm sure I don't know — 
I never saw anything like that in all my born 
days!" And then he went on just like this: "I 
was down to the village — Is it a squirrel ? — They 
told me I 'd better call and see if you 'd like to 
buy — Did you tame him 
yourself? A chipmunk ? 
You don't say! — codfish- 
tongues and salt-herrings, 
only ten cents. — Well! Do 
tell ! Look at him take up 
that nut! — I can supply 
your family once a week 
— Of all things! It 's the 
queerest sight I ever wit- 
; > ; nessed. He handles that 

(vSf nut for all the world just as 

my wife handles the loaves 
after a baking ! My eyes ! See him try to get that 
in his jaws ! — Well, good-day, ma'am ! — Who 'd 
'a' believed it? " And off he went, without know- 
ing whether we wanted any codfish-tongues and 
salt-herrings or not. 

The Squire and Mrs. Feathertail were at swords' 
points with each other all summer. As she grew 
tamer and bolder, she was not so easily scared 
by the Squire, and at last the day came when she- 
got the better of him. She was sitting on Ruth's 
hand, filling her cheeks with pieces of cracked 
nuts. She had a piece in her paws when the 
Squire appeared a few feet off. He looked ready 
to spring at her. She dropped every- 
thing, reared up on her hind legs, 
and looked him square in the eyes. 
It was as plain as print that she- 
was thinking, " Your time has come ! 
I 'm going to settle with you, now and 
forever ! " Neither of them moved a 
hair. A full minute they glared at 
each other. Then the Squire's bob- 
tail rose up and broke the spell. Mrs. 
Feathertail gave a leap, and was after 
him. Around and around the barn 
she chased him — up one beam, down 
another, over the wood piled up in the bin, under 
the divan, across both my legs and, at last, out of the 
door. What happened outside we did not know ; 
for, though I was out after them quicker than a 
wink, they had gone. But after that, high and 
mighty was Mrs. Feathertail, and the Squire never 




dared to show himself within 
gunshot of her. He be- 
came a kind of squirrel- 
tramp, and foraged about 
the wood-pile outside, where 
Jim kept a supply of nuts 
hidden for him. 

The poor Squire nearly 
lost his life soon after Mrs. 
Feathertail got the upper 
hand of him in that ugly 
way. The cistern at the 
back of the barn was found 
uncovered one morning, and 
there was a grand hunt for 
the lid, because we all were 
afraid that Jim or Will would 
tumble in, heels over head. 
Jim had his thinking-cap on 
that time, and was the only 
one to suggest that the lid 
might have fallen inside. 
He ran himself to look, 
leaned over, and just took 
one peep before he bobbed 
back and screamed. Of 
course, I ran to the spot, 
and there, down in the cis- 
tern, was the cover floating, 
and on it the poor little 
Squire, all wet and tired 

out, going from side to side, looking over the edges 
and seeing nothing but his own face in the black 
water — for, of course, it was pitch-dark down 
there. Will was there, and sat flat down in the 
grass and began to roar, as usual. I said we 'd bet- 
ter call Uncle John. Jim ran at once, screaming: 
''Papa! Papa! Come quick! Fire Squzz is 
drowning ! " 

And he scared Aunt Rachel nearly 
out of her senses, for she thought it 
was Will. Uncle John is just splen- 
did. He speaks so quietly, and says 
exactly the right thing. " Stand 
back," he said, and of course we all 
did. I never heard of anybody that 
did n't mind Uncle John as quick as 
a wink. And he just lay down on the 
ground and reached his long arm 
down the cistern till he could just touch 
the Squire's raft with the tips of his 
fingers, enough to stead} it. Nobody dared to 
breathe. It was only about two seconds though, 
before up popped the Squire, running along Uncle 
John's arm, around his shoulder, over his back, 
and off to his hole in the grass. Little Will laughed, 
with the tears still rolling down, and hugged his 




i88 7 .] 



MRS. FEATHERTAIL AND SQUIRE FUZZ. 



3OI 



mother. Jim threw his arms around Uncle John's 
leg, and I slung my hat in the air, and shouted, 
"Three cheers for Uncle John !" And the little 
chaps helped in the noise, 1 can tell you ; and I 
guess Uncle John felt pretty grand and proud. 

But that was the last of the Squire. He must 
have decided, when he fell into the cistern, that 
he had tumbled into an earthquake, and that our 
part of the country was n't safe. 

That was near the time for our going back to 
New York. And Mrs. Feathertail began a new 
kind of business. She seemed to be as busily pack- 
ing as we were. At any rate, she did not care any 
more for nuts or corn, and used the barn simply 
as a cross-cut to her nest, where she was collect- 
ing dead leaves. She never appeared without her 
mouth full, and the quantity that she could carry 
at once was surprising. Uncle John declared she 
wanted them for feather beds, but we really sup- 
posed she covered her winter stores with them. 
When we went away, she was still collecting them. 
We left several piles of nuts where she and the 
Squire could find them : but I found out the next 
summer, when I got acquainted with Zenas Dick- 
erson, that two rascally boys from the village dis- 
covered the nuts and ate them all up in one day. 

When we went back the next year, and drove 
up to the barn, there was the woodpecker, of 
course, sitting at his front door in the cupola. 
We boys said, " Hulloa ! " to him, and then went 
straight to the places where we had left the nuts. 
Of course we did n't find them (because of those 
wicked boys), and we were sure the squirrels 
had taken them. Aunt Rachel did n't think the 
boys were so very bad, though, for she said : 

" How could the boys know whom the nuts were 
for? And, after all." she added, "little boys are 
almost as nice as squirrels." 

We did not really expect to see our old squir- 
rels again, and were on the watch for others to 
tame. So, one day, when Ruth 
a ladder hanging her rags and 
drapery, and I was making tent- 
Jim suddenly gave one of 
tie young laughs, and 
Gusty ! " There, sit- 
spinning- wheel, 
miink staring 



/ 



its might 

hand, 

jump- 



r$«&^ 



was up 
tags for 
sticks. 
his lit- 
said,"Oh, 
ting on a 
was a chip- 
at us with all 
'. held out my 
andweknewby its 
ing right into it that 
pF^ it was Mrs. Feather- 
tail. Everybody was glad 
to see her back again, and 
she went to work at the nuts 
and corn as if we had not been 
away at all. She came back with 




all her pretty ways, and went on 
about the same as ever. Three 
other chippies came and used 
to chase one another all over 
the barn, and, although 
Mrs. Feathertail was not 
very friendly with them, 
she never treated them 
had the Squire. 




grew tame, and 
turns in coin- 
age, dodging 



as she 
They 
used to take 
ng for for- 
one another, 
instead of squab- 
bling. We named 
them "Wire," "Bri- 
er," and " Limberlock." 
And the third ye